Miruthan review

Miruthan review: Nothing novel about the first Tamil zombie film

Probably the first zombie film in Tamil cinema, Miruthan is a tired story with gory faces, glazed eyes and blood, not to mention a storyline that annoys. (Miruthan/Facebook)

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Miruthan
Director: Shakti Soundar Rajan
Cast: Jayam Ravi, Lakshmi Menon
Rating: 2/5

Shakti Soundar Rajan’s Miruthan, probably the first zombie adventure in Tamil, is by no means novel in the world of cinema. As early as 1932, Hollywood popularised Voodoo magic through this genre with the film White Zombie. Several others came in following decades including I Walked with a Zombie, The Plague of the Zombies and Night of the Living Dead.
Japan is better known in this genre; in fact roots of zombie movies can be traced back to the Edo and Meiji periods in which ghost stories were part of the folklore.
However, for an essentially Tamil-speaking population - most of which does not have access to Hollywood cinema, let alone Japanese fare - Miruthan could be an experience. Perhaps taking a cue from Japanese filmmakers who invariably infuse comical elements into their zombie dramas, Rajan has laced his movie with humour (mercifully not of the stupid variety I often see in Tamil cinema) and a hint of romance. So, if at all Miruthan attracts ticket-paying audiences, it will most likely be on the strength of its wit and love.

Watch Miruthan’s trailer here:
Otherwise, the film is a tired story with gory, hideous faces, glazed eyes and blood, not to mention a storyline that annoys. An accidental spill of radioactive material in Ooty leads to a dog turning feral, exhibiting symptoms of rabies (hydrophobia, etc). When the rabid animal bites a man, transforming him into a cannibalistic zombie, it sets off a chain of unimaginably gruesome events, stretching as far as Coimbatore. Dozens and dozens of men turn into zombies within hours, while a team of doctors try to develop a vaccine overnight (seriously?).

Enter young woman doctor (played by Lakshmi Menon) who collects samples from dead zombies in Ooty and tries to reach Coimbatore at the foothills to help the vaccine development. A traffic cop, Karthick (Jayam Ravi) who has secretly been in love with the doctor, tries to help her reach Coimbatore through the pack of blood-thirsty zombies
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Miruthan offers ample opportunities for our policeman to indulge in heroics -- shooting zombies dead as if he were Bond with a licence to kill. And Karthick never seems to run out of bullets with hundreds of them flying out of his pistol and rifle.

Replete with a dhoti-clad politician (who fancies that he has enough clout to even command zombies), a sidekick to the hero and a selfish fiance, Miruthan, like many Tamil movies, tries to pack too many sub-plots, cluttering the main narrative.

The use of ear-shattering sounds and sudden bursts of ghostly zombies on screen does little to add to the terror element. What an outdated technique. The cast salvages some of the film. Menon does present an above average performance as a medical professional who values life, even it happens to be a zombie. But Ravi, in all fairness, has little scope other than to play a hero in the traditional sense of the term -- knocking down zombies with his bare fists and/or pumping bullets into them. He appears bereft of emotion, except when his kid sister is in danger.

On a side note, Miruthan has been passed with an UA, despite the producers’ demand for U, a rating that would have given Rajan’s work an exemption from tax. But surely, Miruthan is NOT suitable for young children.

 From the director of Naaigal Jaakirathai comes Miruthan, or well, Peigal Jaakirathai. They are not really peigal, or for that matter zombies, as the makers eagerly mentioned during the promotions, but simply “patients”, as doctor Renu (Lakshmi Menon) delicately puts it. You see, these are not undead people, like in zombie films, but simply citizens of Ooty, and later, Coimbatore, who have been infected by some sort of toxic chemical waste which causes the amplification of the ‘animal instincts in man’ that “exist here”, says a doctor, pointing to the back of his skull. If they were actually zombies, landing headshots would be a no-brainer, and a guilt-free exercise, but as they’re just infected people, Renu, who in an earlier scene is shown undertaking the Hippocratic oath (and with a clenched fist, no less), gets furious when traffic policeman Karthik (Jayam Ravi) guns them down, like balloons at a beach (which incidentally is a scene by itself in a love song). Her ethics hold good until she’s at the receiving end of an attack, when she almost implores Karthik to shoot the patient down. I’m sorry, but was that the hippocratic oath, or the hypocritical oath?

Genre: Action Horror
Director: Shakti Soudar Rajan
Cast:Jayam Ravi, Lakshmi Menon

Storyline: A traffic policeman has to help find a cure to the new disease in town

Renu, of course, isn’t the only woman Karthik has to protect. He is a Tamil hero, and

Miruthan is Kollywood’s take on zombie films. So, he also has to ensure the safety of his little sister, Vidya, who, truth be told, looks more like his daughter. In a better film, she’d probably play his daughter, and his love for Renu would be better established than just by showing a photo of her in his wallet. There’s something sinister, perhaps more so than zombies - about a man who meets a strange, attractive girl, and immediately decides that he’s in love and keeps her photo in his wallet. Also, in a better film, the illness affecting the residents of Ooty and Coimbatore would be better explained; their symptoms better understood. I wasn’t even sure if the disease had a name. I never really undestood the incubation period of the infection. Some people get bitten and seem to immediately turn into a blood-lusting feral creature, with the eyes going white and the skin turning scabby. Some others, like a doctor, for example, find their bodies not really deteriorating for hours.

You know how zombies function. You know they can’t run and simply totter about, you know their main mode of attack is to bite, you know that the way to destroy them is to destroy their brain… but with the patients in Miruthan, you aren’t really sure. They seem to punch and kick. They seem to be able to sprint. They make extraordinary leaps. Some even seem to suddenly burst with super-human power, as if possessed by a demon. In that sense, you have to wonder if Miruthan is just your average ghost movie pretending to be something far fancier. It definitely has the sort of jokes you’d expect in Aranmanai-esque films. In one scene, a rather unfunny politician stares at hundreds of infected people, and says, “Ennama ipdi panringale ma”. In another, a man is shown eating Lays during a tense scene, and explains, “Laysaa pasichidhu, adhaan Lays.” It suddenly made me realise that there are things far worse than a zombie bite. Like that joke.

Nevertheless, I quite liked some of the action set-pieces, especially the one with Karthik driving a tempo, with dozens of infected people clinging to it à la the famous Fevicol ad. I wondered if Shakti Soundar Rajan would have taken the easy way out and not bothered with applying ‘zombie’ make-up on all of them, but I couldn’t quite spot any aberrations. The real aberration in Miruthan is the lack of consistency in treatment. In some scenes, like when an infected person clings to Renu from outside a car, the film treats the disease light-heartedly. In some others, like in that climactic song the mood of picturisation was a bit reminiscent of I’s ‘Ennodu Nee Irundhaal’, the tragedy of the whole situation is severely milked. You don’t quite care deeply for Kathik’s love story; so, all the melodrama isn’t really affecting.

At 106 minutes, there’s time for such love tracks, but there isn’t enough to do any justice to the science of the illness. The infected, for some reason, are allergic to water; though you’re shown some scientists who somehow seem to know how to create a vaccine overnight with limited medical supplies for this exotic disease, you’re not even given half-baked mumbo jumbo for why the infected are repelled by water. I only wish they’d treated the whole film either as a serious thriller, or tried to have a lot of fun. Like the scene in which the police stand guard at the border to stop people from leaving the town, but a politician with clout makes it out anyway. That’s native, organic humour, but there isn’t a lot of that in Miruthan, which suffers from the same malady that afflict many bad Tamil films: needless, forced melodrama, and a distinct lack of subtlety. I think it’s safe to say that we still don’t have our first zombie film.