Ratsasan aka Raatchasan Review - Spine chilling thriller!!!

Bharath Vijayakumar

Ramkumar's Ratsasan makes a start unlike a thriller. These scenes are about an assistant director trying to get his first chance as a director. You have seen the hero as an inspector in the trailer and so you wonder for a while. But things begin falling into place. Ramkumar does not use this start merely as a primer but it fits into the larger scheme of things as well. The script the hero has been working on is one that revolves around a psycho and so you can get a picture of things now right? This is exactly how Ramkumar treats Ratsasan throughout. Whatever you think as a minor flab to cater to the mainstream has been cleverly woven into the central narrative of this edge of the seat thriller.

The best aspect of Ratsasan is that it is treated like a true blue psycho thriller where the life of every character on screen is in danger. There is absolutely no respite and it is the hero who is on the back foot throughout. Vishnu Vishal continues to delight us with his choice of scripts. In his commercial attempts he usually comes across as earnest but it is in these films that he looks the part.

Ghibran comes up with a terrific background score that keeps you petrified. He could actually be the star of Ratsasan. He even makes a cameo in a scene that showcases the intelligence of Ramkumar. I don't want to spoil it for you but there are more such instances in the film where Ramkumar keeps you glued with small twists. You expect something , something else happens and then it leads to a googly that throws you off guard. This keeps happening throughout and all these are not are not twists out of nowhere but the result of some very good writing. Most of the times they can be routed back to an old scene.

The sketching of the villain is one of the best you have come across in thrillers in Tamil cinema. In their sole goal of maintaining the suspense, most of the erstwhile thrillers bring in the bad guy at the last moment and worse still they would pull in someone out of nowhere. In Ratsasan, the villain is revealed somewhere a little after the mid-point. What really surprises you is the convincing flashback and further still the film does not lose steam after the reveal and the twists still keep piling up.

Ramkumar also touches upon few aspects of the society without trying to impart a message. The undue importance of marks in our academic system is one such. What we assume as a comedy scene early on when a student fakes her father's signature actually leads to major implications later. Body shaming is another area the film ventures into. Loved how Ramkumar showcases school as a place that could make or break a person. Again, there are no messages but we see incidents and the repercussions make their way into the tight narrative.

Did the film need songs? Well, not really but again the screen space of the songs is utilised to take the story forward. A couple of scenes seem a little far fetched but that too is within the threshold of acceptance for this genre. Felt the portrayal of the egoistic lady police could have been more subtle. But again this seemed to work well for a majority of the crowd, suggested by their roar of approval in a scene where she gets it back.

Bottomline:

A top notch thriller that holds your attention almost immediately and then keeps the momentum right through.

Rating: 3.5/5