Now, giving edgy titles to films has become a trend in Tamil cinema. It’s as if they want to let you know what the film is all about by putting some variation of Devil or Demon in its name while trying to convey the darker themes. However, director Aathityaa’s Devil seems not to know what it is about either with such a straightforward title itself, as the movie suffers from an identity crisis throughout. We are left wondering if it is an emotional drama, horror thriller or both.
The story revolves around Hema (Poorna), whose life takes a turn after meeting Roshan (Thrigun) during an accident. Her growing friendship with him creates a rift in her marital life with Alex (Vidaarth). The film starts off on a high note, blending elements of a murder mystery and thrilling horror into one but loses its grip ten minutes into the movie and stops being interesting until the climax. The narrative stretches too thin trying to build up Hema and Roshan’s friendship while also failing at muscovite-thin writing that does not convince us about where this movie takes place. At one point Devil takes us down another genre alley only to return later like a child who rushes back home with tons of excuses having forgotten that time.
The film also has characters grappling with Oedipus complex. Relatives of Hema who have never left her alone since her marriage tell her that she should treat Alex like a husband whom she cares for as mother would do so. When Hema confronts Roshan about something serious, he says “Ponnunga laam kannadi paathiram mari, bathirama odaiyama pathukanum” (Women are like glass vessels should be carefully protected). Such lines make you cringe.
Hema tends to forgive instantly too much often also. When Roshan misbehaves with her, he slaps him and goes away angrily. But few days later, she forgives him and even says sorry when it was his fault. This trend also repeats itself in her relationship with husband.
The male characters are limited to narrow roles and seem to have little ability beyond cooking Maggi or having extramarital affairs. With Hema running behind either Alex or Roshan, we don’t see much of who she really is as a person because all these caregiving and do-gooder roles overshadow her character.
The devil has put the pictures of Jesus all over the film, each one representing a different phase of his life, in order to predict what might happen to the characters. However, rather than dealing with the devil in the room, or in this case devils in the room these morally ambiguous characters seem like glaring red flags when examined closely; they are blinded by anger and desire. When Alex stares lustfully at a female colleague during a meeting, her legs and lips are shown in an uncomfortably voyeuristic camera movement that stays on them for too long. Meanwhile Mysskin, who makes his debut as music composer with Devil has used piano and violin instruments to fill dialogues with emotions thereby providing right amounts of calming and chilling harmonies at every beat.
What perhaps rescues this badly written movie is its last act where numerous horror tropes get piled up along with one climactic twist after another which turns events around interestingly enough till certain point post which credits roll leaving us dissatisfied.
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