After playing a socialite who uses social media to her advantage in the web series Call Me Bae, Ananya Panday plays a character who learns about the perils of constantly being online. Her character gets caught in a digital web that has its reaches far and wide. Vikramaditya Motwane’s digital thriller CTRL revolves around a couple whose lives become too entangled in their online personalities. The second half of the Hindi drama goes darker and becomes more than just a cautionary tale of being chronically online.
CTRL: Plot
Panday is Nalini aka Nella Awasthi, who has build up a brand around her blissful relationship with her college boyfriend Joe Mascarenhas (Vihaan Samat). The happy bubble of the influencer couple bursts, that too online, as Nella discovers Joe cheating on her. Angry and depressed, she chooses a way to eliminate him from her digital life through an AI (artificial intelligence) app called CTRL AI. Removing him from her pictures is easy enough, but what happens when Joe goes missing? Nella discovers darker secrets that he was hiding from her as she looks into his disappearance.
CTRL: Writing and Direction
The first and second half of CTRL are widely different; it opens a relationship drama and moves into a digital thriller. The novelty of both these stories is that we are seeing the characters through digital screens – their phones, laptops, CCTV cameras, etc. Director Vikramaditya Motwane, with co-writer Avinash Sampath, makes valid points about our growing digital reliance. We are hardly aware of what information we are signing away. The finale also highlights our need for connection even if it happens to be with a creepy AI bot that knows way too much about us.
CTRL: Performances
Panday isn’t treading on any new territory. She is familiar essaying the role of a character whose happiness is derived from her online personality. She did the same in Kho Gaye Hum Kahan last year too. However, her performance in the final few minutes is quite strong as Nella craves some connection with anyone who can give. Samat, as her former boyfriend is also who stumbles unto something he shouldn’t, also impresses.
CTRL: Critique
The Hindi film, at first, explores the ‘be-careful-what-you wish-for’ scenario in erasing a person from your digital life. In doing so, we see how much of life has changed digitally to physically. Between the frenetic energy of the first half to the more serious and muted second half, there is a slight whiplash from tone. I preferred the morose ending, it’s befitting this sinister story that could be happening around us anyway.
