Masthishka Maranam

Did not read anything about it. Just pressed play, and honestly, that turned out to be the best decision because the film earns every bit of surprise it has in store for you. From the very first sequence, the film drops you into a world that feels both familiar and deeply unsettling. It is set in Neo-Kochi, 2046, and it is the kind of dystopian future that does not feel like science fiction as much as it feels like where we are already slowly heading. The sea has risen, the class divide has widened, and technology now lets you extract a person's memories and experience them as a VR game. That opening grabbed me instantly, and the gameplay that follows is a genuinely clever way of pulling your attention in before you even realise what kind of film you are watching. These kinds of films are rarely made, and you feel that rarity right from the start. Then you meet Bimal. The film takes its time with him, and it is worth every minute. You watch his life, feel his weight, and slowly understand what he is carrying. He is a grieving father who lost his daughter and cannot let go, while his wife simply chose to wipe the memory of their child and move on. On the surface it looks like two ways of coping. But what the film is really asking is something older and more uncomfortable: if you could skip the grief entirely, should you? This is the emotional core of the whole thing, and the film never needs to spell it out loudly. It just shows you Bimal and lets you feel it. The world around him is built with small, brilliant details. There is an AI housekeeper that creates music based on your mood. Honestly, I want one. But there is also something quietly disturbing running underneath all of it: personalised ads that bring back your dead loved ones to sell you financial products. The film does not dwell on these details, but they stick with you. Then Frida enters the picture, and the film adds another layer entirely. She is one of the last real human stars in a world full of AI-generated celebrities, which already makes her fascinating. But what the film does with her is layered. On one hand, her introduction carries some sexualisation that can feel a little out of place at first. Stay with it though, because it is deliberate. The industry around Frida has always treated her as a product, selling pieces of her image and her private life through technology that makes it all look perfectly legal and clean. What initially reads as uncomfortable is actually the film making you feel exactly what it wants you to feel about how she has been treated. Alongside this, the film quietly shines a light on how opinion culture works today. How being in the news for anything at all is enough for everyone to grab that moment to make content out of it, chase engagement, and tell their audience what they think. It is a really sharp observation and it sits in the film naturally, without feeling like a lecture. This is where