Movie Review: Game Over (Tamil)

In Ashwin Saravanan's cerebral, genre-defying psychodrama Game Over, stay-at-home video game professional Swapna (a fiesty Taapsee Pannu alternating between being distressed and vulnerable) faces her inner demons in a high stakes game that plays out in ways unnerving and unpredictable. The makers toe a slow-burn line, doing very little at the start to bung in enough shockers. But there is a palpable sense of unease all throughout. What's more, the film begins creepily on a voyeuristic note — with a young woman stalked on her way back home, before she is brutally murdered. Cut to Swapna a year later, it's very apparent something is not right with her. A memory of a physical assault seems to be the cause, and now she finds herself getting panic attacks in the dark. Her therapist assures it's just an anniversary reaction. But it doesn't take very long for things to go south, even as Saravanan (who previously directed the atmospheric Maya), along with co-writer Kaavya Ramkumar, rapidly layer the movie with mood and dread. The result is a crisp, nail-biting home invasion thriller with horror undertones (a poster reads: "Video games ruined my life. Good thing I have two more," subtly foreshadowing what's to come later) set in an almost entirely female universe — it's as if the men are mere afterthoughts — that cleverly riffs off Christopher Landon's Happy Death Day while offering a compelling portrait of a woman in a state of mental anguish and conquering it in her own way.