Mercury

<p>Five long-term friends, who are suffering from , meet at a farm for a high-school reunion. Michael plans to propose to Meera, and calls her and his friends, and they go on a night-time drive. At their destination, Michael proposes to Meera and she accepts. Afterwards, while driving her four friends home, Meera is temporarily blinded and nearly runs over a dog because the four friends have been interfering with the car’s headlights. Somehow, the friends have accidentally dragged a blind man to his death when they swerved to avoid his dog. After dumping the blind man’s body, the friends are terrorised by his ghost. The ghost kills the men in the group and tries to kill Meera as well. Meera reveals she is deaf and did not realise the car had hit someone. The ghost realises that he has killed innocent people, thinking they were the owners of a factory whose owners are responsible for the mercury poisoning. The ghost shares his story of being blinded due to mercury poisoning: one night, he was walking his dog when the leash accidentally got stuck to the friends’ car and the blind man was dragged along with it until he hit a headstone and died. Despite his accidental death, the ghost forgives Meera and spares her, after possessing her to see his wife one last time. Upon leaving her body, the ghost gives his hearing capacity to Meera and burns down the factory. wanted to develop a full-length, dialogue-less feature film after his earlier short film , which is largely devoid of dialogue. Before the release of his feature directorial debut (2012), Karthik, an admirer of the of and the dialogue-less film (1987), had this desire, but found difficulty conceiving a story concept. After completing some feature films, Karthik developed a fictional story set against the backdrop of the 2001 incident, in which hundreds of workers were allegedly exposed to toxic vapours at the now-defunct factory in , ; the incident also inspired the title . Karthik stated the film also explores exploitation of small towns by corporations. He said the absence of dialogue gave him more freedom to emphasise the film’s other aspects, such as music, to increase its “thrill factor”. was produced by Kaarthekeyen Santhanam of and of . Cinematography was handled by , the film was edited by , and stunts were choreographed by the twin brothers . called his role in unique and unusual compared with his previous films, where the script demanded a dance or comedy sequence. The other cast members , , , and Anish Padmanabhan had appeared in Karthik’s earlier films. Shashank Purushotham, a -based theatre actor, made his debut. The actors began rehearsing for their roles 20–25 days before production began. joined the cast near the end of filming. By early June 2017, the makers had completed shooting 60% of the film, mostly at locations in Chennai, Pondicherry, and . The film, which was being shot secretly, was officially announced later that month after filming had ended. Because most of the filming was done indoors, Tirru chose not to keep the camera steady to avoid , either from the characters’ points of view of that of a third person. The team also filmed a because filming multiple takes would require them to keep moving the cameras. Tirru said: “The situation too warranted it as cutting it into different shots wouldn’t convey the intensity of the scene. The idea was to make the audience understand the characters’ stand and make them feel claustrophobic.” , Karthik’s regular composer, composed the background music for . Though the film does not feature any songs, a promotional song titled “The Mercury Song” was composed by ; lyrics were by , and sung by and , and the song was released on 15 March 2018. Santhosh composed another promotional song called “Oru Mara Nizhalil”, which was recorded by Sathyaprakash Dharmar and lyrics were written by . “Oru Mara Nizhalil”, which was released on 19 April 2018, is a song that is picturised on the romance between the characters Michael (Sananth) and Meera (Indhuja). Karthik initially would be scheduled for theatrical release on 13 April 2018, which was . The film’s theatrical trailer was launched on 7 March 2018 and drew a positive response from viewers and audiences. Because has no dialogue, the producers found distributing and releasing the film in different regions under the same title was easy. ‘s and distributed in , and KFC Entertainment acquired the rights to release the film in and . Pen India Limited acquired the film’s global rights. The trailer of was scheduled for release on 5 April but to show solidarity with the statewide due to the , the makers postponed the trailer launch, although it was launched on 10 April by prominent celebrities. was released worldwide on 13 April 2018, excluding , where a strike was organised by the against the digital service providers because of an increase in the . A day before the film’s official release date in India, was screened at the . The same day, the makers hosted a special screening in Mumbai. was leaked online through pirate sites, despite not having a scheduled release in Tamil Nadu. Prabhu Deva and the film’s cast urged fans not to watch pirated versions. became the first Tamil cinema release after the 48-day strike held by Producer’s Council. The film opened to a wide release in Tamil Nadu on 20 April 2018. Celebrities such as and praised the film’s cast and crew. received mixed reviews from critics. On the website , 67% of 12 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.2/10. chief critic Reza Noorani gave three stars out of five, saying: “There are no big scares that delivers. Instead, it unravels at its own pace which is not perfect at all times.” of , stated the film is “a disjointed drama that uses conventions of the slasher flick and the horror film in order to spin a none-too-scary yarn that oftentimes borders on the unintentionally funny”; Chatterjee also stated: “the film ventures into the territory that occupies – the destructive force in turns out to be a figure that waits for the stimuli of sound to line up and pounce on its targets”. Y. Sunita Chowdary of stated the film has its fair share of “chills” and “thrills”. Udita Jhunjhunwala of noted the story as one of the film’s major flaws, stating: “the story just does not stitch together”. Anisha Javeri of said, “Though the historical backdrop could have made for a compelling metaphor, the clichés and heavy-handedness of ultimately outweigh the novelty of its premise, while its sloppy social relevance angle does more to confound than clarify the disaster in question”. She added that it “may be remembered as the first silent thriller in Indian cinema, but it’s far from the heart-stopper we’re looking for”. Manoj Kumar R. of gave three-and-a-half stars out of five, stating: “Karthik Subbaraj’s plot has a few gaps and he also uses the regular narrative techniques of the horror genre to create the moments of shock. However, the overall impact of on a viewer is very effective, encouraging us to brush aside the shortcomings.” Sajin Srijith of gave a rating of four out of five and said: “Karthik Subbaraj’s is audacious, technically-impressive, and an experiment filled with delightful surprises”. Nandini Ramnath of wrote: “Subbaraj tries to dress up a routine horror film with a social theme, but fortunately, the director has enough tricks up his sleeve to make the scary portions work”. Arnab Bannerjee of gave one-and-a-half five stars and stated: “Karthik Subbaraj tries to juggle a thriller horror story with a not-so-original twist”. According to of , Karthik made both a thriller and an “emotional horror-drama with a touch of eco-activism”. of stated: “The film breaks out of the formula horror film and attempts something new although the characters don’t stand out”.</p>