Mercury

Karthik Subbaraj begins with the routine horror built up which has a strong effect over the impactful events. While unfolding at somewhat leisure pace which keeps stimulating the horror effect inconsistently. The sound heavy silent thriller becomes chilling once the thrilling entity enters, we start absorbing and the need of "silence". Although, the scares are less - what builds up scarily and eerily is Karthik's effective handling of the sensory modalities - deprecating us to breathe for a while. The unique conflict between senses - sight and sound trembles into a thrilling cat and mouse game.

It's definitely a brilliantly-crafted thriller but that's not essential. The major tonal shift is abrupt which throws us off the dark track while Karthik tries to get hold of social theme - environmentalism. Nevertheless, it's commendably rendered for the effect along with fine bunch of cast including the gutsy Prabhu Deva.

"Mercury" is a noisy thriller at it's best though marketed as a silent thriller film, it makes us sick with the toxic green hue and Karthik's fearless and gutsy filmmaking sails safely through this interesting cinematic venture.

The title of the movie and the plot is irrelevant. The movie starts with silence and we actually enjoy it. The place where subtitles are shown, we start feeling of watching completely an alienated film.

The story has plot holes in it but the actors save the show. Kudos to Prabhudheva who was the one man of the show. The story is made flexible.

To earn a wider range of audience and to convince the story, all the people in the movie are made deaf and dumb.

Two stars for acting and One star for nail biting scenes. Three stars for music.

#MercuryMovie is a hushed horror film, but it doesnt make your hair stand on end. A group of friends, 4 males n 1 female, meet in an isolated house. A late night drive results in a man getting killed. While trying to dump his body, they enter an abandoned factory where they get slain, one by one. Since there r no dialogues, sound plays a crucial role in the film. Prabudeva impresses, as the revenge-seeking dead man. His makeup is good. Performances r decent. Not a prodigious film, but worth watching as an experimentation. Rating 3/5.

For a silent film, Mercury's soundtrack has enough going on. Unfortunately, that is the only thing going on here as you end up being sermoned by director-writer Karthik Subbaraj about the hazards of mercury poisoning in what feels like a contrived thriller at best. Five youngsters - all both deaf and dumb - are out partying at a farmhouse. It is the adolescent nature in them that drives them to go on a quick outing in the middle of the night. What starts like a merry trip with two of them even introducing their love for each other comes to a screeching halt when they find a dead body (Prabhu Deva). Because none of them can hear, the further proceedings in the film become a bit challenging to follow. With Subbaraj throwing flashbacks at you, there's a constant sense of apprehension in the narrative, which even the smartest viewer will find slightly annoying. The use of ambient score earns brownie points here, but this is no Pushpak Vimana (1987) or Raja Harishchandra (1913) which Mercury boasts of being inspired from. This thriller has been meticulously plotted so as to turn it into a silent film, which is how dictionaries around the world define the term "gimmick", even in cinema parlance. Even as a well-shot thriller, it does suffer from huge plotholes and conceptual issues because at one point you have Deva acting like a victim of mercury poisoning (the main theme) and at other he has shades of paranormal activity. The hybrid may be true but writer Subbaraj hardly hints at their combination, instead always focusing on how the camera captures the actors' emotive faces or forcing the audience stoop at their seats awaiting a jump-scare. Mercury starts off well but quickly goes downhill to become a boring stash of a soundtrack-driven drivel. With unintentional humor scattered all over the place and amateur performances by the lead actors, there is only so much to appreciate in this thriller. Which is not enough to justify a ticket price especially when there are better films out there. TN.

I think this is the first Indian film since Pushpak to use no dialogues in it, although here it is because all the major characters are mute and deaf. The sign language was not completely comprehensible for those who doesn't know it without subtitles but relating to the context it was not that hard to follow. The plot is a very simple horror movie setup but the execution is impressive. The cinematography, the steampunk look, use of shadows etc were brilliant. The atmosphere was really perfect and the sound design is also spectacular, especially the blind v deaf scenes. There's lot of inspirations that can be found here but even when there is no dialogues and the whole setting that can give an other worldly feel at the end it shows how much of an Indian film it still is. For some that must have been a negative but it wasn't that bad in my opinion.