Movie Review
Nevertheless, if you go into this movie expecting a thriller, you won't be disappointed. As a self-proclaimed Dulquer Salmaan fan, I enjoy the variety of choices the actor has made with his latest ventures, and seeing him as an anti-hero in this film shows how much potential he has.
You know the local Catholic florist Danny (played by Dulquer) is suspicious, and for anyone who saw the trailer for the movie before the movie started, the ending isn't shocking. The story follows the tale of Inspector Arvind Mathur (played by Guneshli Deol), who is on the hunt to find a psycho serial killer who is on the loose and murdering film critics who bash films without thinking about the consequences of a negative, uninformed film. The review would affect the success of the film and subsequently the hard work of the director.
Legendary Filmmaker
The film tries to pay homage to legendary filmmaker Guru Dutt, who stopped making films after his last film received a lot of negative critical reviews. The film pays tribute to the filmmaker's films, particularly Kaagaz Ke Phool, which was critically trashed after Dutt's death.
After witnessing the multiple murders of film critics left behind with "star ratings" etched on their corpses, Mathur enlists the help of a psychologist named Zenobia (played by Pooja Bhatt) to find the killer's psychopath.
Chup itself is a thriller, but it's hard to see a scary villain in Danny. When it comes to psychopaths, we rarely see Hannibal Lecter ( The Silence of the Lambs ), Norman Bates ( Psycho ) or Patrick Bateman ( American Psycho ) in recent indie films.
The last notorious psychopaths in Hindi films came from Ek Villain's Rakesh Mahadkar and Mardaani 2's Shiv Prasad Yadav. So, to say that Chup gave us a new scary psychopath would be an understatement. The first half is slow but catchy and the exposition in the second half is certainly remarkable.
The film introduces an extremely novel concept, but the story telling is merely passive, we feel it fades when we reach the climax.
It's nice to see the murders actually happen after Mathur figures out the motive behind the crime, so linking the murders to the reviews was an interesting choice. By the end of the stick, you sympathize with our villain.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack of the film is a great callback to the old hit songs of yesteryear and it is refreshing to see these retro hits in the modern setting of 2022. Pooja Bhatt as Zenobia was the much-needed badass for the story.
Thankfully, Sherya Dhanwanthary's character was not just a romantic interest, but a woman who fell in love with a gray character and ended up paying the consequences for falling in love too soon, too soon. Overall, Chup is pretty interesting at the beginning and throughout the reveal of the crime, but the end of Chup pales in comparison to the first half.