‘Maargan’ movie review: Vijay Antony, debutant Ajay Dishan steer an impressive genre-blender with a faltering finish-OxBig News Network

Editor-turned-director Leo John Paul’s Maargan is the kind of genre-blender that shouldn’t have worked theoretically — who would take a crime investigation seriously if there’s a lesser-known supernatural element in the mix? Sure, we have seen investigations surrounding ghosts or mythical creatures and monsters, but seldom with the supernatural aspect in Maargan. The film is an ambitious, whimsical mix of genres, and even imagining how the story would have been conceptualised and pitched to lead star and producer Vijay Antony feels fascinating. Many wacky ideas in the film don’t make sense outside the world of the film.

Take, for instance, the supernatural element at the centre; debutant Ajay Dishan’s character (the actor is impressive in his debut) Tamizharivu is a talented young swimmer with an eidetic memory. His biggest flex, however, is a superpower of sorts — he can access and swim through the astral plane, a metaphysical realm where the logic of our physical world does not apply. Sounds confusing?

Move on to the next paragraph to avoid the following spoiler-y analogy, but this is fascinating, to say the least. Say you had a bland sambar rice at your office canteen yesterday but missed checking out the other options available at the counter; if you were like Tamizharivu, you could relive the memory of your lunchtime from yesterday, and then perform an astral projection of sorts and swim through that reality at that point of time, and even go into the canteen kitchen without anyone noticing your astral body. Only here, the character has an agenda far more serious than lentil stew.

If Tamizharivu’s powers are far-fetched, he is also suspected to be a serial killer with an unnerving modus operandi: injecting young women with a mysterious drug that blackens their bodies and kills them instantly. This case is being investigated by Assistant Directorate General of Police, Dhruv Korak (Vijay), who, after having already crossed paths with the killer, is left with half his body blackened and under medication. So picture an investigation with a cop who is a living reminder of the fate of the victims.

But here’s the surprise: despite such wild ideas in the mix, Leo John Paul’s Maargan impressively brings it all together to a large extent, becoming a thoroughly engaging thriller. The film’s attention to detail is what first makes you sit right up in the initial portions. Before Dhruv gets a call informing of a murder of a similar operandi in Chennai, the cop lies wasted on the floor of his Mumbai flat. Signs of a bleak night all around him, he is lying down on the left side of his body, positioned in such a way that when he wakes up, the camera reveals the blackened left side of his body. But here’s the detail a less serious filmmaker would have missed out on: in a passing moment, as he’s about to open a text, he relies on his right hand to move his left, a sign of a limb that fell asleep from numbness after supporting the weight of his body overnight.

This might seem like a frivolous, even obvious, detail, but it is this meticulousness that grounds us in the world of Maargan. Everything Dhruv does and approaches feels real — when he realises an interrogation might take six hours, he orders lunch and coffee for his team, which includes Kaali (Mahanadhi Shankar) and Sruthi (Brigida Saga) — and this allows the audiences to buy Dhruv’s surprise when he witnesses the supernatural aspect of the story. The key to a gripping investigative thriller is how it pulls you into its world from the beginning, and Maargan excels in that regard, also thanks to the background scores and a colour grade that adds to the atmosphere. It helps that, unlike most usual investigative thrillers, the crux of Maargan’s story begins after a rather intriguing suspect is already in custody. Of late, the problem that has plagued many Tamil thrillers is how contrived some set-ups and pay-offs feel; here, you like how a button camera or a magazine cover or a detail about chlorine-filled water recur later on.

Vijay Antony in a still from ‘Maargan’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

While Maargan does a great job of framing its own logic for the supernatural world and sticking by it, there are quite a few lapses in the real-world logic in the film. The meticulousness in detail gets lost as the story progresses. For instance, you wonder how the people Dhruv meets in his investigation — including acquaintances he hasn’t met in a decade — do not seem perturbed or surprised by the visible decolouration in his body. Moreover, the whole section revolving around Tamizharivu’s ex-girlfriend feels tacky, and you wonder if the purpose could have been achieved more effectively. Also, is it necessary for cops to have suffered a tragedy to take a case seriously? Sure, a troubled cop grants him the creative liberty to do as he wishes, even operate outside the yellow lines if needed, but this pattern does get a bit exhausting, especially if the tragedy is related to the case in hand.

Now, what might come too close to turning the tide against the film is how the final act is written and treated. The director ties the ends by going after a sitting duck that one could see coming from far away, and even if this was the whole point of the story, you wonder if it could have been handled in a less didactic fashion.

On the outskirts, Maargan could’ve been any other serial killer investigative thriller, if not for the supernatural aspect that elevates it into something more. Which is why it’s impossible to settle for the blunt reality it forces upon us towards the end. If some real-world ideas in the investigation could use a supernatural twist, you wonder why the other real-world ideas spelt out in the climax weren’t treated similarly without turning didactic. The film fails to do so despite having all the necessary ingredients for it.

If anything, Maargan is an amusingly paradoxical representation of what Tamil cinema could do more of — stars experimenting with genres — as well as what it could do away from. We don’t need to end all films with an in-your-face moral lesson, and we don’t need one that can’t even get its ‘isms’ right.

Maargan is currently running in theatres

Published – June 27, 2025 06:06 pm IST