Director: Naseef Yusuf Izuddin
Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Soubin Shahir, Darshana Rajendran
Language: Malayalam
Is there any role Fahadh Faasil cannot do? Be it a petty thief or a humble photographer, a creepy brother-in-law, or an emotionally scarred con artist, Fahadh has given us so many shades of his acting skills. And the most recent one is Irul, where he is … well, let us say he has his moments!
Irul, directed by newcomer Naseef Yusuf Izuddin, is a psychological thriller with the usual tropes. An old creepy house in the middle of nowhere, a crime novelist, battering rains, and so on. Adding to the Charlie Kaufman-ish thriller trope is the green colonial wallpaper that the house sports. But that’s about it. We have all these thriller elements floating around but not tied down with a solid script.
Alex (Soubin Shahir) and Archana (Darshana Rajendran) are a young couple who go out of town for a weekend. Archana is a busy and successful lawyer and Alex is an entrepreneur who writes mystery novels on the side. It is raining and the car is stuck in the middle of nowhere. The camera pans to a lonely bungalow at a distance with a feeble light. The couple, wanting to escape civilization, are not carrying their phones (Erm, but WHY!). They knock the door of the house and it is opened elaborately by a stranger (Fahadh Faasil) who is wearing a fancy bathrobe. The ensuing conversation is filled with psychological questions about Right and Wrong and soon a convenient power cut makes the trio realise that there is a dead body in the creepy basement. Which means… there is a murderer in their midst.
The road oft taken is taken in this thriller as well, and elaborate staging apart, the dialogues feel forced and artificial. There are the customary jump scares especially when we get a peek of the suspended dead body in the basement. But in the larger scheme of things, it all feels diluted without any real thrill to follow through. A shouting match between the three, an interesting conversation about a writer’s inspiration, a Latin phrase about wine and alcohol, … are all interesting events that lead to nowhere.
Fahadh is someone who takes up any role and pulls it off with ease. In Irul too, we get to see glimpses of his acting range – from a creepy stranger to a helpless thief. Darshana adequately shows anger, confusion, and fear and Soubin too plays the role of a confused man with a dark past pretty well.
Performances aside, if not for an incomplete script, convenient plot twists, and cliched thriller tropes, Irul would have made for an interesting watch.
Rating: 2/5
