2nd October 2021,
Disney + Hotstar
Indian directors directing horror films tend to forget one crucial thing - horror doesn't rely much on cheesy jump scare scenes, heavy breathing or poor CGI of flying toes, horror is when the audiences are knit up with the characters on screen. The audience should know the character, they should root for him, they should atleast try to connect to him.
Though 'lift' - the brand new OTT (?!) horror film from Hotstar shows decent attempts of making a successful horror film, the movie goes down in the character development department. The audience were never given a chance to explore the personas of the lead characters, were never explained the circumstances of one scene leading to another and were never given a proper opportunity to even learn the name of the characters.
Bad pacing - that's what it is. While we think that some of the scenes should have never made it to the film's final cut, we also feel that some other scenes could've been a lot longer. For instance, that scene where they watch the news about their impending death, the director could've allowed the characters to react properly first, before going all crazy. A little bit of suspense could've perfected the scene but the film makers made messes all over the film by making it too racy, like next, next, next, no time to reflect, no time to properly react, but to say cringe dialogues, we have all the time in the world.
Awful acting, dialogues and dubbing - especially Kavin's acting and dialogues would suit a comical genre more than horror. Bigil crush Amritha either can't act for sh#t or didn't want to put much efforts in it. (OTT?!). The scene where she cries over the fake death of Guru, so humorous. The kind of reaction you shouldn't get from a horror movie. Many a times, you can notice that since the director didn't plan properly and didn't give enough time for the dialogues, characters are fast reading or filling out details in one or two seconds. Failure.
The film is not an entire failure considering the social message it is trying to convey - the capitalistic and barbaric ethics of the IT service industry. It is true and awareness should be made about it. Although what the film shows is Tamil cinema triggered corporate villain themed exaggerated version of IT Industry, in reality it is just any other company that makes you work for days and pay for hours. We may thank the makers for the inclusion of such a theme that is not vastly explored, but remember that there are million reasons to survive than having few reasons to take your own life.
To sum up, Lift doesn't lift you up much. It's draggy at the boring parts and racy at the interesting parts. Definitely not worth of the time being alloted to it, but you can play it while cooking or doing other chores and watch it every now and then, for once.
Vetrri
Parent's guide:
A scene where we see a man and a woman fully clothed in a sexual position, it's obvious that they are indulging the act. The lead character smokes at the end of the film. There are throat slitting scenes and various scenes of committing su1c1des. A muted use of the Tamil swear word 'Punda' which means 'gunt'.
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