Ratsasan / Rakshasudu Movie Review

 

RATSASAN Movie Review

A “MOVIE” is simply Telling a story VISUALLY. A good movie is made, when the team (Or ‘CREW’ to be precise) of the movie succeeds in telling the story in a better way than how other can. Movies are basically divided into categories called “GENRES” basing on the kind of story of the movie. There is a huge list of genres of movies. Romance, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Action and the list goes on. Writers even try making new kind of genres by merging any two or more genres like… Rom-Com, Action-Comedy-Thrillers (In India, those movies are referred to as “MASALA ENTERTAINERS”). One of such new kind of genres is “Psychological-Thrillers”. This category of stories is usually written and made in such a way that they make us question ourselves of “Did the antagonist do the right thing?”. Sometimes the answer is YES and most of the times, we try to CONVINCE ourselves that the answer is NO.
Most of these Psychological-Thrillers will be in such a way that they appear purely fictional. Few of them succeed to be close to real life and make us fear of them happening in real life. One of those few and if not the best, “RATSASAN” is one of THE BEST psychological-thrillers ever made according to me.

My simple review for Ratsasan is “A PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL CRIME-THRILLER”.
There are a few basic elements of a movie which needs to be good, to be making a movie THE BEST of its kind. Let me review those FEW basic elements in the movie RATSASAN and explain how the makers succeeded in executing the movie PERFECTLY.
The elements are:
Writing
Direction
Audio (Background Score & Sound Effects)
Visuals
Editing

WRITING

The writing for a film can be divided into story, screenplay and dialogues. All of the three are done by the Tamil director “RAM KUMAR”. The story of Ratsasan is simple to be told in short. “An anonymous person is brutally killing girls in the city who are aged between 15 to 18 and the protagonist (Arun, S.I.) has set a mission for himself to be catching this psychopath.”
With this simple storyline, Ram Kumar has made out a really great script with complex screenplay, which makes it a Seat-Edge-Thriller and makes us hooked to the screen.
Also, the character arcs are realistic and that is what makes us actually BELIEVE and FEEL the story. The Director setup Arun’s (The Protagonist) character as an aspiring filmmaker who wrote a story about a psycho-killer and collected various news articles about murders happening and also has Half-a-foot thick book about his research on psychopaths. This is what makes the character more BELIEVABLE on how he solves the cases.
Now, Christopher’s (The Antagonist’s) character arc is more like a REASONABLE one. It makes us think that there is nothing wrong in Christopher becoming what he is.
Coming to the dialogues, they were OKAY. They are just like how the story needs them. The intensity is enough to generate enough curiosity in the audience.
Though some of the scenes seemed pretty coincidental, the story makes them feel relevant.
Coming to the way he connected the scenes and how cleverly he wrote the scenes, we can say that his writing is FLAWLESS. He has written the scenes which distract us from the truth. That is what makes the twists in the film, more unexpected
The fact that the story deals with CHILDREN, especially GIRLS being brutally murdered, it hits the sensitive spot of us all. This is what makes us actually FEEL the story of the film.

Basing on the above analysis about the writing, I want to give a 9.5/10 to the writing part of the movie.
DIRECTION
Ram Kumar even helmed the project as the director of the film. Coming to his direction, he pulled out the best out of the whole team. Let it be the actors, music director, cinematographer, editor or literally anyone from the team. They did their best. The director made them do it. The director succeeded really well in the execution of his vision. Now, let me talk about how he squeezed the best out of the actors. The cast, to be honest… He got the best for his film. There isn’t any STAR cast in this film and that is what made it close to our lives and made us BELIEVE the story that Ram Kumar wanted to tell. The best one from the film is obviously “Vishnu Vishal” who played the protagonist of the film and Saravanan who played as Christopher: The Ratsasan. literally gave us chills in the spine with his performance.
By seeing the movie as a reviewer, we could sense that the director is clear about what he wanted to see on screen and what kind of feeling that a particular scene would generate in the audience.
For the direction, I would give a 9/10.
AUDIO (Background Score & Sound Effects)

Gibran is the music director for this film. Have to say… We cannot imagine a better background score than Gibran’s for this movie. He definitely decided not give a regular score to this film. He made the film sound more organic with the sounds he used in his music. Let it be the piano theme of Christopher or the theme of the movie with the sounds of the flies, which makes the film creepier than ever.
The Re-Recording of the film (Re-Recording is the perfect balance between the background score and the sound effects in the film. The better the Re-Recording is, the better the audio output for the film will be) is simply Top-Notch.
My rating for the audio part of the film is 9/10.
VISUALS
The visuals of the film? Enough. Nothing more or nothing less than that. The colours that they picked for the movie are made use of, perfectly. The colours of the film are one of the most important assets of the film. They take us into the mood that the director wants the audience to have. They went with a DARK approach for the story and so are the colours.
Now, the light setting and angles. It is clear that Ram Kumar is precise and sure about how the lighting and the angles in which the scenes are shot should be.
Cinematography is one of the main pillars of the story. It shouldn’t be dominating the story. Here, P.V. Shankar (Cinematographer of Ratsasan) is in sync with the vision of Ram Kumar. The cinematography helps Ram Kumar tell the story in a suspenseful way that he wants his film to be. The camera angles made us feel the story and he gave us a nail-biting thriller with his cinematography.  The production values are decent and that is what makes the cinematography as ENOUGH for the film. They are not Top-Notch visuals, but perfectly executes the story.
I would give an 8/10 for the visuals of the film.
EDITING
San Lokesh handled the editing for the film just like the cinematography, the editing was good ENOUGH. It is just as needed for the film. Some of the cuts of the film are sharp enough that it creates the nail-biting experience. The editing is what that makes the film Fast-Paced and makes it a thrilling experience. The editor also was clear, not to make the audience to feel bored at any instance.
My rating for the editing of the film is 7.5/10.

In conclusion, this movie succeeds in executing the writer-directors vision in a flawless way. As I said, this movie is a “Perfect Psychological Crime-Thriller” and my rating for this movie, based on my analysis done above, I would give it an 9/10.