‘Siren’ movie review: Jayam Ravi struggles in a vexing, dull drama

‘Siren’ movie review: Jayam Ravi and Keerthy Suresh's latest film, Siren, is an annoyingly loud and dull experience with a predictable narrative and forgettable characters.

The loud squeak from car tyres after a sudden brake. Scratching fingernails on a harsh surface. Rubbing two polystyrene pieces together. Slurping an empty drink with a straw. Dragging a metal chair across a tiled floor. If even imagining these sounds could annoy and drive someone insane, imagine being restrained to a chair and being killed by using the high-frequency sound produced by grating a metal sheet on the ground. This is one of the many killing methods used in Jayam Ravi’s latest outing, Siren, a film that is so annoyingly loud and dull that it would make all the above sounds feel like a melody to the ears.

Everything about the film feels like the product of a screenwriter who got carried away after writing an intriguing one-liner and an inexperienced filmmaker who struggles to convert the ideas on paper to screen with clarity and cohesion. What has piqued the interest of the storyteller in debutant Antony Bhagyaraj is ambition in holding your attention by revealing bits and pieces of information, while a seemingly intricate plot unravels. A man named Thilakan Varman (Ravi) who had allegedly killed his wife comes out on a 14-day parole after 14 years. Fate has it that just as he gets out, a series of murders occur and police officer Nandhini (Keerthy Suresh) has reason to believe that it’s Thilakan who is behind them all.

To add to her doubts, Thilakan, along with his parole officer Velankanni (Yogi Babu, the much-needed comic relief), also strangely find themselves at the crime scene around the time of the murders, but Thilakan pleads that he is innocent. Nandhini vows to find more evidence to support her claims, and this only pushes Malar, Thilakan’s daughter who despises her father, for all the social stigma she suffered, further away.

Now, who is Thilakan? Did he really kill his wife? Is he the guy behind these killings? Antony wishes to withhold answers to make you more curious but fails disastrously in deciding when to reveal what, as you can pretty much sum up how the film would pan out. Right from the beginning, you also begin to notice a sense of plasticity in how we are introduced to this world and force-feeding in conveying the emotions of the central characters. Something as trivial as what this man released from prison after 14 years instinctively looks at while stepping out of the vehicle should alert you to the logical space this film wishes to operate from, but the pitfalls in logic and emotional reasoning become glaring as things unravel.

Keerthy’s cop, on the other hand, takes the crown as one of the most infuriating on-screen cops in recent times. She hardly follows procedure or attempts to find some solid evidence, bases every decision in her investigation on hunch or hearsay, and it takes really long for her to piece information together. We are told that she was suspended following a custodial death; just as you wonder if she was the victim of the politics by her dirty superiors, watching her arrest men randomly or use violence recklessly makes you wish she gets detained.

You also never truly understand where she is coming from or the motivations behind whatever she does, and it does get tiring to see Keerthy alternate between a handful of stock expressions as this cardboard cut-out of a cop. On the other hand, you only feel bad for Jayam Ravi, as his subtle attempts to add depth to his character are certainly visible in quite a few places—to little avail.

It’s amusing to wonder why this film was titled Siren, but with background scores playing so loud and a predictable narrative that moves so restlessly, it certainly does feel like watching a generic, forgettable film for the second time with a loud siren playing on one end of the stereo.