'Black' Review: A genuine attempt at a high concept film, despite its complicated ending.

Black comes out as a very engaging genre film that somehow ends up confusing the proceedings, although it succeeds in sustaining the mystery.

Jiiva shoulders the film skilfully, raising above the usual shock or reactions,while PBS gives a decent performance. This minimal casting and the chemistry between the couple helps in maintaining some stakes for the story.

The film really is very atmospheric and makes great use of sounds. Sound design is one among the finely executed aspects of the film that compliments the film in a good manner. Visuals aid very well to register the nature of the film, with minimal usage of other lights to set for a very realistic feeling of a confusing row house setting that is used to the fullest in the narrative.

The film has a shaky start with a needless song and some broad stoke attempts to convince the audience about the nature of the protagonist. The film spends another 10 solid minutes with a song to show the couple and their closeness for the emotional stakes to appear later. The deliberate yet decent usage of red herrings through a character is nicely built through the story.

After a very so-so 20 minutes, the film jumps so quick into the story and puts together some great stretches of suspense and mind-bending events. The film's biggest strength, atleast till the end, was that it did not try to explain things but rather builds the suspense and gives us some good moments of mystery. A high concept film like this should have made use of every minute to have great callbacks in the end. The narrative does have some surprises in the bag and gives us some puzzle like events to find answers for, along with the characters.

With all its merits, the film does derail at the end due to its attempt to explain these events or what do we call 'exposition', which bogs down the impact of the suspense, as it kind of gives a half-baked explanation to the events. The dialogues are pretty much amateurish with repetitive dialogues that goes again and again with the same questions about the confusing events. The story's attempt to over-complicate the situations at the end gives a very underwhelming feel about the whole film.

But with all its merits and demerits, Black is a very good attempt at narrating a high-concept genre film without diluting the theme.

Flying colours for a film titled 'Black', ironic!!

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