CTRL

CTRL Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Ananya Panday, Vihan Samat

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

What’s Good: The engaging premise.

What’s Bad: A very mellowed-down version of what could have been a brilliant Black Mirror Episode

Loo Break: Avoid!

Watch or Not?: Definitely Yes

Language: Hindi

Available On: Netflix

Runtime: 98 minutes

User Rating:

The past one year has been all about AI and debates surrounding the same. The good, the bad, and the Ugly. Internet and Social media repercussions have been brilliantly done in various formats in International Cinema – in fact, to a scary and horrifying level on Black Mirror. Vikramaditya Motwane, in this engaging thriller, taps on a Desi and a much-mellowed version of Black Mirror for Indian audiences.

Ananya Panday, in CTRL, plays a social media influencer who doesn’t spend days brooding over a breakup. But decides to move on with the help of a Bot. What initially seems like a childish version of any love story turns very quickly into an engaging thriller channeled and driven by the cons of AI.

In the past few months, we have witnessed a lot of drama over the Artificial Intelligence technology – from gulping jobs to deepfake videos, the technology has shown us the worst. And Vikramaditya Motwane takes you beyond the worst to mirror the reality of moving away from reality and dumping oneself in the virtual world. But does CTRL hit hard? Find out in our review.

CTRL Movie Review: Script Analysis

Written by Avinash Sampath & Vikramaditya Motwane, CTRL offers a very intriguing insight into the worlds of Gen Z and Alpha generation. They are fast, picky, and pacy, and they know how to find their way. And they do not need an experienced real person to guide, tutor, or mentor them. They would trust a bot or the internet more than genuine advice from a real living person. And probably that is the reason they might not even take time to mourn over a lover’s death. They are the generation of go-getters who have struck a balance between being emotional and practical, and they know how to live with this choice.

However, along its full course, CTRL does not justify its premise with the shock element or the hit-hard factor it should have or could have. However, the movie, in its 98 minutes, never leaves a dull moment despite a predictable pace. At some point, I felt that this was a film that could have achieved a ‘Searching’ (a 2018 screenlife mystery thriller whose success launched a sequel called Missing and a series called Run) but burned out before reaching the climax!

From what starts as an initial inspiration from ‘The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind’ to a chapter from Searching aiming to run and find refuge in a Black Mirror Episode, gets lost in the maze quite a few times, taking the wrong turns at the right points!

CTRL Movie Review: Star Performance

Ananya Panday has definitely found her niche and carved a unique space for herself with these different sets of films blended well with social media analogies, terms, and issues. Right from Call Me Bae to CTRL, the star is even working on her skill set, which definitely seems to have come out a ton better than her last outing on Amazon Prime Video’s Call Me Bae! Call it the backing of a strong story or the mood of the film, Ananya shines in a film that she effortlessly shoulders single-handedly for the first time in her career.

Apart from Ananya, the other major characters of this film are the dialogues, which are so simple and effortless that it seems we are listening to a conversation happening the very next door. Sumukhi Suresh is the woman who needs to be applauded for such clean and crisp segments!