CTRL: Ananya Panday is playing the lead role in Vikramaditya Motwane’s film

CTRL: Usually, one of the most annoying things a movie can do is to forsake its characters and become totally fixated on the story. Our mainstream film has always battled with this; things have become worse in the streaming age. Show runners in particular are allegedly able to get away with anything on digital platforms as long as the first episode has a murder. Well, someone most definitely dies at the conclusion of the first act in CTRL, the new film from Vikramaditya Motwane – his first movie since AK versus AK in 2020.

Like with that movie, the characters in Ctrl are so boring that you would be ready to overlook it for plunging headlong into an intricate (sometimes illogical) storyline. But as it moves on, CTRL becomes more and more far from its protagonist—odd given the nature of the film.

Executive produced by Timur Bekmambetov, a guy who can now claim affiliation with both Angelina Jolie and Aparshakti Khurana, CTRL is a “screenlife” thriller—a film that plays only via the dark mirrors of our devices. Filmmakers like Bekmambetov himself have utilized the method in the past to make sharp remarks on contemporary society, but via interesting character-based stories. Motwane puts the cultural critique above anything else in Ctrl. He loses any pretence of drama in the second section of the movie and moves to a paranoid thriller tone instead.

In the primary part of Nella Awasthi, an aspirational social media influencer living her ideal life in Mumbai, Ananya Panday is just superb. Then some, the young actress can hold a close-up better than most of her colleagues. Nella used to be named Nalini in her prior life; she hails from a middle-class Delhi household. Along with her partner Joe (Vihaan Samat, from Eternally Confused and Eager for Love), she started producing comedic skits online.

Though this would appear to have little bearing on the overall image, it is indicative of some of the main shortcomings of the movie, although Ctrl does not exactly pass judgment on the quality of Nella and Joe’s material. It turns to a comic book-inspired story that drags Nella down a conspiratorial rabbit hole as it seems less inclined in learning about who Nella and Joe are as individuals.

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Joe was apparently a member of a covert society of sorts, committed to exposing the atrocities of a Meta-esque company called Mantra. But the discovery of another secret throws off Joe’s research—which he was undertaking on the down-low. Joe was concealing his inner adultery in addition to keeping the revolutionary within him secret from Nella. The story starts only when she finds him red-handed at a Smoke House Deli or something, then showing out with another female after one of his secret club meetings. It’s a contrivance really below the level of a Motwane storyteller.

Nella inherits not just the burden of a five-year relationship but also Joe’s revelations on Mantra after they split. She is tasked with finishing Joe’s mission after he disappears. The movie needs Nella to be rather foolish if it is to go beyond this stage. Some of the things Ctrl does are truly unthinkable, even if she was always online and had no choice but to be aware of all the most recent algorithmic upgrades. Not only does Nella behave like someone who has no concept how the internet works, but her dismal dialogues require her to use phrases like chedna, pachtana, manhoos, balki, chhaanbeen, vishwas – she speaks like a character out of a Salim-Javed movie.

But the second part of the film locks you in a chokehold of obsession and annoyance. Even after Nella has tasted Joe’s findings, you will want to rip your hair out at the recklessness she displays. After being seduced into compliance by an AI assistant that looks an awful lot like Ranveer Singh from Lootera, she essentially signs over her life to Mantra. She allows the AI she calls Allen access to all facets of her digital life. Given that the film presents an inflated reality and that everyone is already somewhat doing this, this is kind of reasonable.

But Nella’s careless attitude about always having her camera on for Allen is the one thing that pushes plausibility beyond a reasonable level. She lets “him” even peek at her as she sleeps. Most women already exercise great caution regarding this.

Perhaps most successful in the little times when it appeals to our debilitating digital dependence is CTRL. Thematically comparable Kho Gaye Hum Kahan performs a better job than even Panday’s previous picture. She clearly feels dread when Allen locks her out of her accounts, as is the fury she tries to get back into them. For the generation raised Android-style, with a phone connected to their hands, this kind of stuff might cause life-or-death concern. In Nella’s situation, lives are really on line. Was she ever an activist though? The film never claimed so; in fact, her material had no traces of cruelty even by the normally subdued norms of social media influencers.

For the longest run, the best praise you could offer Ctrl is at least it isn’t LSD 2. But when Motwane changes gears once again in the third act, he clearly distinguishes himself once and for once from Dibakar Banerjee’s train disaster of a picture. He chooses something less alienating, something more gloomy, more Motwane-esque instead of the “screenlife” style.

The strongest section in the movie is here. Previously illogical behavioral processes have more gloomy significance. Panday’s performance becomes much improved. The speed slows down to become less frenzied. Nella is given time to breathe even as life passes down her throat. She is given the chance to make deliberate decisions rather than being thrown into circumstances forcing her to thrash about blindly.

In its latter hours, Ctrl plays on Nella’s fragility, her innate loneliness, her fears. You want the whole movie to have been this concentrated. Motwane has always showed a great ability to translate lavishly stylized cinematic settings into fundamental human emotions. Like its protagonist, Ctrl is a strong swing for the fences but it is also overdone; it buries a brilliant center performance beneath a loud storyline and takes the hasty choice to delete its lone link to a beating heart.