The Platform
Directed by : Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8228288/

On those high levels you can eat anything you want, but you don't have anything to wait for. Your mind runs wild. 


Spoilers ahead... 

Goreng (Ivan Massague) joins a vertical prison on his own choice for 6 months, wanting to quit smoking. The prison has one cell per level, and every cell contains 2 people. Daily a platform of food passes by each level, with roughly 2 mins per day they get to eat. At end of every month, surviving people of every cell gets shifted to a new level. Its a surviving test specially with the ratio of food getting reduced if you get a 100 or plus level. Movie starts off on interesting note as the adminstrator is checking all the great looking dishes if they have been cooked perfectly. And then we are cut to Goreng waking up on the Level 48 as like him we get to hear the shock of the place this is. Slowly by slowly we learn as does Goreng, that you can't be stubborn and despite knowing the food is leftovers from above 47 level people, you just gotta eat to survive or you can just end your life with suicide as some others do by jumping down the hole. The conversation between Goreng and Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) is hilarious that includes 'obvio' for more than 20 times.

There's some gore that's hard to watch where survivors in higher levels have to eat human flesh. Basic message of movie is clearly how humans don't know to adapt and get greedy, when they could have just eaten properly and let food stay eatable and available for the rest levels like the lady that Goreng gets as new partner in cell tries to but struggles. You can view the movie more like a system vs common man or upper class vs lower class, just like Trimagasi says earlier 'Don't speak to the people below because they are down below, and the above people won't answer you'. While Miharu (Alexandra Masangkay) who goes down the hole once every month to feed her little girl can be seen as a person who tries to exploit the system successfully but eventually dies. Similarly, Goreng and his partner at Level 6, Baharat (Emilio Buale) fail when they think stopping people upto Level 50 is the way to get the food till last Level. As far as I can gather, the message wasn't the pannacotta or even the girl, rather it was just eat what you told was your favorite food when you were interviewed before been admitted into the hole. The girl clearly had 'pannacotta' as her favourite food which is why the cell doesn't get too hot or too cold when the food is kept even after the platform goes down. The ending is open, hard to say what happens when the girl reached Level0, maybe nothing, thats how humans are, they never learn and thereby the chaos may continue. Quite a thoughtful and interesting movie, and love that background theme, except for the gore sequences its a movie that I totally enjoyed.

My Rating : 8/10



Asur : Welcome to Your Dark Side
Creator : Gaurav Shukla
Directed by : Oni Sen (8 episodes, 2020)

Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11912196/

Kya tumhe abhi bhi lagta hai ki duniya mein achaayi hai? 


A psychopath Shubh Joshi (Vishesh Bansal) believes in Hindu Mythology while he kills randomly, cuts one hands index finger and leaves no clues about his pattern. Dhananjay Rajput (Arshad Warsi) and Nikhil Nair (Barun Sobti), are working as CBI officers on the case, eager to find the common link if any among all the killings and stop the next death from happening. I think first 15-20 mins of 1st episode was the only time I felt not interested in this series, after that its damn good watching the tussle while the real Shubh Joshi aint revealed. Twists are pretty convincing and so are the first scene of every episode that sets the mood up. Love the use of pure shuddh hindi by the antagonist.

I personally felt Rasool Shaikh (Amey Wagh) was Shubh Joshi which the director clearly wants us to believe too with the final ending scene, but digging up some online comments by other people, their theory seems more likely to be true that we actually haven't seen real Shubh yet and all we saw were 3 male and 1 female followers of Shubh. Amey actually reminded me of Riteish Deshmukh a lot, looks and dialogue delivery wise both. Arshad Warsi is superb, while Barun Sobti dialogues at some places were hard to understand, else he was good too. Liked Riddhi Dogra too, and keen to see if at all there's any surprise in store with her character. Anupriya Goenka who plays wife of Nikhil, was quite irritating character until she starts to help out Dhananjay. Sharib Hashmi great as always, kinda of making his name in these kind of roles now and its a pity that they had to kill him off. The tone does remind of Joker from The Dark Knight, especially that Dhananjay and one of Shubh follower scene where he has to know the location to save people, and even the philosophies of Shubh match to certain extent, a person who just wants to watch the world burn. Would love more of Shubh past shown in 2nd season as Vishesh Bansal (he is too good as young Shubh) and ofcourse reveal him out by the end of season. Except for some very minor issues, I thoroughly enjoyed the 1st season, and totally adore that background theme, very catchy and maybe inspired from Baahubali. Hoping 2nd season lives upto the expectations.

My Rating : 8/10