Devil's Double: Next Level Review - Tiresome Outing 

Ashwin Ram

Devil’s Double: Next Level is the fourth instalment of Santhanam’s horror comedy franchise. The film also stars Gautham Vasudev Menon and Selvaraghavan in key roles. Directed by Prem Anand who earlier made DD Returns and produced by Arya.

Premise:

Santhanam is a trendy YouTube film critic. Selvaraghavan was an ardent film fanatic when he was alive, who later became a psycho killer murdering reviewers. Now he invites movie reviewers to his ghost theatre to teach them a lesson. What happens when Santhanam gets caught in his trap forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction: 

The previous outing presented the horror-comedy elements keeping the gaming factor as the base, likewise this one gets a varied idea for the narrative, which is a movie inside the movie. But the setup is absent here, the characters are hurriedly introduced and directly jumps into the conflict, hence drama lacks here from the beginning. That’s where DD Returns stood tall and spaced its first half to strongly set the core for dark comedies to settle in the crime story-world. Certain aspects have been carefully done in order to stay true to the genre, like the narrative format is maintained faithfully till the very end, by creating sequences accordingly. But these factors do not stand out as the film fails to entertain which is its primary objective. Apart from a few fun elements here and there, the jokes on the whole land extremely flat. There are attempts in the screenplay to induce humour in many forms such as spoof, dialogue-counters, slapstick and black comedy, unfortunately nothing really clicks. For example, naming characters Hitchcock Irudhayaraj and Mama Kurosowa alone won’t evoke laughter, there got to be hilarious characterizations right. The issue is with the poor writing of several situations that don’t add any value to the flow, they just keep revolving around the same square without taking the story forward. The all-artist combination stretches are also wasted without playing to its strengths. Bringing in multiple old songs for no reason has truly reached the saturation point, hope our filmmakers realize it and work something out creatively. No focus nor any impact in the serious topics covered like the slasher angle, climax messaging, etc. 

Performances: 

Santhanam has shown variety with his mannerism and dialogue delivery, with choice of words that suit his character, flipside his overacting is evident at many places where he has a compulsion to emote. The ladies have enough screen space, but they barely contribute to the happenings. Pity to see Gautham Vasudev Menon in a pointless character, the spoofs around his stature just feel like an easy target. Motta Rajendran is comparatively better, the finale that feature him as a tribe is a solid one. But the other artists whom we have enjoyed watching on-screen are huge backfires namely Maaran and Kingsley. Nizhalgal Ravi’s role is the terrible of them all, with full of toilet jokes that tend to bother after a point as it becomes uncontrollably repetitive.

Technicalities:

No songs and that is a good relief to the already tiresome flow. Background score is very basic, but that is utilized well in the situations as an interesting tool for the hero to predict what is going to happen next. Nothing remarkable in terms of cinematography, but the cameraman has provided what us required for the subject, especially with the point-of-view angles for the theatrical shots. Dull editing as there are so many lags, the runtime is just around 130 minutes but it feels like we have spent an entire day watching the film. The same old white powder and stuff for the ghost faces, the makeup for the cannibals were great as they looked very realistic.

Bottomline

The one liner is pretty interesting and new-age which is enough to provide a passable entertainer. But barring the rare clap-worthy moments, the comedy is a complete misfire. Lack of entertainment in the flow is the major spoilsport.

DEVIL’S DOUBLE: NEXT LEVEL - Tiresome Outing with Insufficient Humour!

Rating - 2/5