Mirage movie review: Jeethu Joseph and Asif Ali test the limits of ‘how many twists are too many twists’

“Fades as you get closer,” Mirage’s tagline says. Well, you can say, “the closer you look, the less you see” also; it’s the same. Either way, Mirage thrives on misdirection and suspense, keeping the audience in the dark until the director chooses to bring them into the light. However, what significantly affects the movie is the lack of intrigue in the script penned by Jeethu and Srinivas Abrol, based on Aparna R Tarakad’s story. Mirage is, in all honesty, packed with spoon-feeding through dialogues, and thus lack subtlety throughout.

Soon after the movie introduces its core plot, nearly every scene becomes dialogue-heavy, conveying all things verbally rather than visually. For instance, there’s a sequence early on, set at Abhirami’s house, where three conversations happen consecutively among different characters, with Abhirami being the only common link. It begins with her interaction with Rithika. Then Ashwin arrives, and they talk. After he and Rithika leave, Riyas shows up, leading to a heated exchange between them. Ashwin then reenters to speak with Abhirami before departing, leaving her to converse with Rithika, who has returned from work after learning that Riyas had come to threaten her.

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Unfortunately, the burden of conversations never truly leaves the movie, as everything is revealed through the lines delivered by various actors. The worst part is that almost all suspense reveals also occur through SP Arumugham’s dialogues, as if Jeethu was determined to invert the “show, don’t tell” technique.

Although Mirage is packed with “twists,” none of them manage to take our breath away, primarily due to the unimpressive screenwriting. The makers’ failure to elevate adept moments — both in writing and visually — and provide depth to those instances that could have enhanced the drama and tension is evident throughout. As a result, Mirage fails to capture the audience’s attention and interest, leaving viewers not care enough to whether the case is solved, let alone interested in the unravelling of the narrative’s knots. By having SP Arumugham appear sporadically and use him to dump new revelations about various characters on us — almost like a magician pulling a vanished bunny from his hat — without employing any visual storytelling techniques, Jeethu only weakens the film further. Worse still, do we even care about these suspense elements, which we weren’t even aware of before? Absolutely not.

If Arumugham’s job is to spit out secrets, Riyas’ only purpose in the movie is to walk in holding a pistol every now and then. While Rajkumar exists to look daggers at people and say, “I need that hard disk,” Rithika is the supposedly well-meaning but annoying friend. Abhirami, meanwhile, comes across as a distant cousin to Aparna Balamurali’s character, Diya, in Dhoomam (2023), with her only purpose in life being to ask others questions and make it evident that she doesn’t have any answers. Although the suspense elements in their respective arcs and the eventual revelations clarify why they had been behaving in certain ways, the lack of effort that has gone into meaningful characterisations leaves us like Guna (Samuthirakani) from Vada Chennai (2018), wondering about these flat characters, “Macha, yaaruda ivanunga? Enga irunthu vanthu irukango?”

Although Asif Ali deserves credit for taking on a character like Ashwin, who has a chilling backstory, the fact that he’s made to simply exist in Mirage for about 140 minutes — with almost no opportunity to contribute meaningfully as an actor — until the climax makes one wonder if this was a price worth paying. Although Aparna shines in the intense moments, she too fails to soar beyond a point owing to the hollowness in Abhirami’s character. Hannah Reji Koshy, meanwhile, does some things with her face while uttering the lines, but to call that acting would be too much. Though Hakim Shahjahan is good in certain scenes, his overall performance isn’t worthy of praise.

Almost shamelessly, Jeethu uses crime against women as a plot device in Mirage as well. Here, however, it is to attempt to elevate a narrative that has already hit rock bottom by that point. Nonetheless, unlike in some of his earlier films — where stronger scripts made some viewers overlook this problematic choice — it becomes painfully clear in Mirage that the said incident was included purely for dramatic effect; with no real compassion for those who have experienced such trauma in real life.

If anything in Mirage is as poor as the writing and Jeethu’s direction, it’s Satheesh Kurup’s cinematography, marked by an overuse of weird camera angles. Vishnu Shyam’s music, while occasionally serviceable, ultimately fails to uplift the film in any meaningful way.

Mirage movie cast: Asif Ali, Aparna Balamurali, Hannah Reji Koshy, Hakim Shahjahan, Deepak Parambol
Mirage movie director: Jeethu Joseph
Mirage movie rating: 1.5 stars

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