Mili

Janhvi Kapoor Is On Fire In This Cold Survival Thriller. It’s raining remakes this year in Bollywood, and Janhvi Kapoor‘s Mili is another drop in the bucket. Mathukutty Xavier‘s Malayalam survival thriller, Helen, had Anna Ben in a never touched before topic in Indian cinema. The film has now gotten a Hindi adaptation for those who are yet to see the original film (with subtitles or dubbed voice), with no changes made at all. Thank God for that. Xavier‘s thriller wasn’t the first one in the survival genre, but it was definitely one of its kind for Indian cinema, soon after Vikramaditya Motwane‘s pathbreaking attempt, Trapped (2016). Before that, many good attempts had been made by the foreign cinema industries, like Cast Away (2000), Castaway on The Moon (2002), Into The Wild (2007), Life of Pi (2012), The Martian (2015), and our Hindi sensation Pihu (2016). Xavier‘s film wasn’t close to any of these films because it didn’t have that emotional connect and, hence, ended up as a cold thriller (and I’m not talking about the place). Mili comes out as a complete copy and paste, but the technical departments looked much better here. Maybe because I saw that film on OTT and this one in Cinema hall.

Mili is about a 24-year-old girl named Mili (Janhvi Kapoor), who is living a regular life. She works at a cafe but has plans to fly out of the country. Her father, Mr. Naudiyal (Manoj Pahwa), is not happy with her decision, and even her boyfriend, Sameer (Sunny Kaushal), doesn’t think otherwise. They constantly fight over this thing and job, but never break the strings. While things are getting worse between Mili, her father, and Sameer, one night she accidentally gets locked in a freezer room at her workplace. The search begins outside, and at the same time, Mili is fighting to stay alive inside the room at -17°C temperature. Sounds crazy, no? Well, Mili is that much of a crazy thriller.

Written by Alfred Kurian Joseph, Noble Babu Thomas and Mathukutty Xavier, Mili is a realistic thriller, but it tries to be too filmy. You’ll see a lot of dramatic sequences that hamper its realistic values. A small dose of commercial cinema is clearly visible, but that’s okay because it widens the audience of thrillers to the masses. Mili has its own good moments, plenty of them. However, the actual potential was far greater. There are two layers to this thriller: one inside the room where Mili is trying everything to come out, and the second outside, where her father, boyfriend, and others are tirelessly searching for her. You see, the atmospheres of these two layers are contradictory to each other. Inside, what happens is that Mili is alone, and the sound effects make it a very frightening experience. But the film constantly shifts from that tight, cold room to normal things happening outside. It breaks your engagement. Helen suffered the illness, and now even Mili has been infected by the same virus.

Genres:Drama

Director:Mathukutty Xavier

Cast:Sunny Kaushal, Janhvi Kapoor, Vikram Kochar, Hasleen Kaur, Anurag Arora, Rajesh Jais, Sanjay Suri, Manoj Pahwa