virindra

Alagar (K. Selvaraghavan) is a loner who steps out of his house one day with a plan: he walks into a talk-show studio, holds the host and audience hostage and announces that he has written a book. A book no publisher wanted. Its story? A serial killer who will murder one person a day for five days, announcing each victim's first name one hour before the killing. The talk-show host laughs it off, calling it unoriginal. Alagar laughs too and kills himself the moment the police break in.

And then, the next day, someone dies.

Then the next. And suddenly, the police must chase a killer who is already dead.

On paper, Aaryan sounds fantastic. The premise could've been a sharp, nerve-tightening thriller. But the execution feels straight out of a dusty VHS shelf from the 90s. The acting is flat across the board. Alagar is supposed to be the chilling mastermind behind a decade-long revenge plan, but he never comes off as frightening, layered, or even particularly clever.

The "hero," Vishnu Vishal, doesn't help either. He plays another brooding, lone-wolf cop, except his perfectly styled hair and tailored shirts make him look more like a fashion model on his way to brunch than someone who hasn't slept properly in ten years. Introducing him in slow motion, fists flying dramatically, might have worked in 2002, but in 2025 it's unintentionally funny.

And then there's the killing plan itself.

It sounds intricate. But the moment you think about it, the whole thing collapses.

Since Alagar is dead, he needs his victims to follow their routines with absurd precision. But how could he possibly predict something like a random diver choosing that specific air tank on that specific day at that exact moment? He couldn't. John Doe (Se7en) and Jigsaw (Saw) would roll their eyes. Alagar supposedly planned this for a decade, but everything depends on coincidences so fragile that a butterfly sneezing could ruin the sequence.

The pacing is another problem. Whenever the police are racing against the clock, the movie suddenly gets tense, but the acting remains unintentionally hilarious. Then the film slams the brakes to 40 km/h to deliver unnecessary backstories: the hero's random romance, or the tragic lives of the soon-to-be victims. These scenes don't deepen the narrative; they just derail it.

By the end, Aryan left me wondering what genre it wanted to be. Thriller? Drama? Soap opera with bombs? The idea is strong, but the execution can't keep up. It's like someone took a high-concept script and shot it with 90s directing tools, 2025 slow-motion testosterone and a huge pile of coincidences.

Mr. Mercedes starts with a bang; literally, when Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) plows a stolen Mercedes into a crowd of job-seekers. Two years later, retired detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) still carries the case like a stone in his shoe. Brady, meanwhile, lives with his alcoholic mother in a deeply unsettling, but strangely undercooked, relationship. When Brady begins taunting Bill, the old detective snaps out of retirement mode and back into the hunt, giving Brady exactly the attention he craves. And that's where the season never quite finds its stride.

The premise is fantastic; Stephen King writing a grounded thriller without the supernatural. But instead of tension, suspense, or psychological depth, most episodes revolve around... conversations. And more conversations. Followed by a few extra conversations for good measure. The pacing is flat, the dialogue wanders and the rare exciting scenes feel sprinkled in only to keep the viewer from giving up.

Brady's relationship with his mother had the potential to be the show's dark heartbeat but it barely gets explored. Their disturbing dynamic feels oddly sanitized: lots of hints, zero follow-through. One minute she's a destructive alcoholic, the next she's magically sober and behaving like a completely different character, without any emotional logic.

Then you have Brady himself. The show ends episodes with creepy close-ups of Harry Treadaway; wide eyes, twisted smirk, as if to scream: Look! He's terrifying!

But the actual character? A timid, bullied kid who can't even stand up to his terrible boss at the electronics store. The jump from meek nobody to calculating supervillain is never developed. It's a character leap the writing doesn't earn.

The finale, where Brady's fate is left in limbo, is genuinely gripping. For a moment the show finds the intensity it's been promising. But that moment is surrounded by so much slow padding that it doesn't justify the journey.

I've heard season two drags even more and season three derails completely, so stopping after season one feels like the safest call.

A good premise smothered by dull execution. Watchable, but far from essential.