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Connect Movie Review: Nayanthara shines in technically brilliant horror thriller that is regular fare

Connect is directed by ashwin saravanan who has worked with nayanthara in maya. nayanthara and her husband vignesh shivan have produced this film. scroll down to read our review..

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• Anupam Kher is part of this interesting horror thriller.
• The movie is set in the times of the Covid pandemic.
• Connect features Haniya Nafisa as Nayanthara's daughter in this film.

Release Date: 22 Dec, 2022

Susan Joseph (Nayanthara) and her family are enjoying a wonderful break at a beach resort when her doctor husband, Joseph (Vinay Rai), gets called back to work urgently. It’s the outbreak of Covid-19 and Joseph ends up working 24/7 trying to provide care for the Covid infected patients. Meanwhile, Susan and her teenage daughter Anna aka Ammu (Haniya Nafisa) are confined to their home. The only way all of them can keep in touch with each other - and Susan’s father, Arthur (Sathyaraj) - is via Internet and video calls.

Unfortunately, Joseph contracts Covid as well, and passes away in the hospital, leaving his family shattered. He becomes a Covid warrior like thousands of others before and after him. A distraught Ammu, who never got to physically hold her father or even see him before he died, decides to reach out to him through a seance with an ouija board. And this is when things take an evil turn. Does she get to speak to her father? What happens next forms the crux of the story.

Connect is director Ashwin Saravanan’s fourth film and third horror flick. He’s working with Nayanthara for the second time (Maya was their first film together). He has aptly chosen the times of the pandemic to set this horror thriller in. There are flashes of brilliance in the film, but the thrills are few and far between. And this is what hinders the experience. Comparing his work in Connect to Maya and Game Over, one feels this is less true to who he is, as it is an average fare compared to his previous films.

Nayanthara delivers an outstanding performance as always, but young Haniya Nafisa is the surprise package. She has pulled off a somewhat difficult role with such ease and excellence, which shows remarkable acting maturity. Full props to Ashwin for selecting her for the role of Ammu. Sathyaraj and Anupam Kher lend a lot of value to the film as well.

Connect is based on the strong connection between a father and daughter, as well as Internet connectivity, obviously. We wish though that Ashwin had focused more on the mother-daughter bond as well as they are the ones who take the story forward and hold us throughout the film. Hence, in this case, emotional investment becomes limited, and the film enters the horror genre like The Exorcist or The Conjuring. Connect, unfortunately, just didn’t have enough thrills - like those films - to be classified as a pure horror film either.

Technically, the movie is brilliant. The cinematography by Manikantan Krishnamachary and music by Prithvi Chandrasekhar take the film up several notches. Editing by Richard Kevin must also be appreciated.

Produced by Rowdy Pictures, Connect is a film that belongs to Haniya Nafisa and the audience will remember her for a long time to come.

3 out of 5 stars for Connect.

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• Nayanthara starrer 'Connect' started collecting praise from Critics and Trade analysts reviews

Nayanthara starrer 'Connect' started collecting praise from Critics and Trade analysts reviews

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They are a picture of happy family when we meet Susan ( Nayanthara ), her husband Joseph (Vinay), and their daughter Anna aka Ammu (Haniya Nafisa) for the first time in Ashwin Saravanan’s Connect. Covid is still the stuff you only see in dystopian films, and the family is at the beach, happily making plans about the future of their music-obsessed daughter.

Like lakhs of others, the pandemic destroys the dreams of this family as it hurtles through their life. Susan and Ammu are confined to their home during the lockdown while Joseph, a doctor, toils relentlessly to help Covid patients. He succumbs to the virus, and a devastated Ammu resorts to black magic to connect with her dead dad. Things don’t go well, and she ends up being possessed by a demon. On top of that, both the mother and daughter test positive for the coronavirus , which cuts them off from the outside world.

Connect doesn’t rely much on the plot as much as it does on its technical brilliance and astounding sound design. Ashwin has had a firm resolution about staying true to the horror genre and hence doesn’t really experiment with the story. The screenplay pans out exactly how you would expect it to. However, the breathless thrills that you are served with distract from the generic story. You expect the climax to be the high point of the film, but it never builds up to a crescendo.

In a way, that doesn’t seem to be what the director was going for with Connect. Despite all of the scares and technical bravado, Connect in its essence is about Susan’s character arc. Arthur (Sathyaraj), Susan’s father, pleads with her to have some belief in God. A friend tells her to have some kind of anchor in such trying times. Her final resolve to ‘believe’ was supposed to drive home the point, but it is not clearly etched out. It’s because we don’t really see her be one big skeptic in the first place. Or even the subtle depiction of her changes is eclipsed by the conspicuous technical work of the film.

Enough ink will flow while praising the technical brilliance of Connect, and it will be in no way unwarranted. The performances of Sathyaraj and Nayanthara make the film work. Even Anupam Kher as the Father, who only takes a brief screentime, makes us feels safe. With a few more tweaks in the screenplay, Ashwin Saravanan could have easily made a film like Searching (2018) or C U Soon (2020), as Susan’s video calls are used as a narrative device, and cinematographer Manikantan excels at pulling off this gimmick.

The biggest achievement of Ashwin Saravanan’s Connect lies in how, despite being a horror film, it is in touch with reality. While it’s true that cinema is seen as an escapist medium to forget the woes of the real world, there has been a total disconnect between the existing pandemic world and that of our Tamil mainstream films. Connect, living up to its name, finally bridges that gap by empathising with the ones who suffered during the pandemic. It takes us back to the times when we were confined to the four walls of our homes, fearing a threat we couldn’t fully fathom. Undoubtedly, it is in a sense triggering to see the character go through the same ordeal as we did, but it is also in a way cathartic. Again, it is pretty amusing that of all kinds of Tamil mainstream cinema, a true-blue genre has represented the ones that are still grieving.

Connect rating : 3/5

Connect director: Ashwin Saravanan

Connect cast : Nayanthara, Sathyaraj, Anupam Kher

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Kirubhakar Purushothaman is a Principal Correspondent with Indian Express and is based out of Chennai. He has been writing about Tamil cinema and a bit about OTT content for the past eight years across top media houses. Like many, he is also an engineer-turned-journalist from Tamil Nadu, who chose the profession just because he wanted to make cinema a part of his professional life.   ... Read More

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Nayanthara’s Connect Experiments Most With Form, Not So Much With Fear

Director: Ashwin Saravanan

Writers: Kaavya Ramkumar, Ashwin Saravanan

Cast: Nayanthara , Anupam Kher , Sathyaraj , Vinay Rai

Ashwin Sarvavanan’s  Connect  begins at the beach with an image that shows us the ideal family. There’s joy and there’s love and it also becomes obvious very soon that something terrible is going to happen. It invariably does and this event is Covid, that too in its earlier pre-vaccination phase. What adds to the tension is how the father is a doctor and we quickly feel the ‘disconnect’ its members begin to feel as they are separated from each other with each of them getting isolated into their respective computers or phone screens as they talk amongst themselves. 

With computer-screen films becoming a lot more common, it’s amazing to see how little Ashwin needs to explain for us to understand how the film’s going to be told. With the majority of the remaining film playing out heads-on in different variations of the frontal view, there’s no longer a need to add templates, to show you blurry screens or battery signs to confirm that we’re indeed watching people speak on video call. In a sense, even how we perceive video calls has changed so much because of the pandemic that it adds a second layer to a scary film that is about a scary time. It’s as inventive as it is courageous to approach a horror film with this restriction because we know how important camera movement can be to create tension and surprise. 

But Ashwin focusses instead on the positives of this mode of filmmaking. As the four walls of the screen further restrict the movement of the four central characters, who are already restricted within the walls of their quarantined apartments, we feel their helplessness much more than we would if they were allowed to move freely. The added tension of the lockdown prevents even the grandfather to come for help, even though he has moved just a few streets away. The lockdown also solves the problem with any sort of a horror film set in an apartment building. With no neighbours to come for help and no option to take the elevator down to safety, a ghost in the bedroom right next to you is a lot of more suffocating than you can imagine. 

So just think of how much harder it gets when the youngest member of the family ‘brings’ in an unwanted guest. With her effort to reconnect with her deceased father going terribly wrong, an evil spirit enters this house, removing any remaining ounce of normalcy. But just how do you deal with a spirit at a time when you cannot even order in food? That’s the hopelessness with which you’re meant to watch  Connect , a film that’s as much about all-encompassing grief taking over you as it could be about something external and supernatural. 

With themes of a disconnect between mother and daughter adding a further element to the grimness, we wait for the forces of faith and family to restore balance and hope. Here again, along with the film’s intelligent use of sound design, it’s the form that always remains interesting. Desperate efforts to treat this daughter using video calls present us with a perspective we seldom experience in horror. And when a scared, helpless mother looks directly at you, hoping to find some a solution or solace, we’re pushed into their problem as though it is our own. 

But how much does  Connect  push the boundaries of fear to keep you hooked to this premise? At least on the surface, it remains a tad too straightforward to go beyond the template of any exorcism film, let alone try something different given its Indian context. The characters in the film are Christian and this doesn’t do much in the way of images with the same upside down crosses, the bottle of holy water and the pages of the Bible getting reintroduced as important visual motifs. Apart from the loft and cupboards, even places to hide cannot be inventive beyond a point when you’re restricting the action to a familiar apartment. Another element that was missing was how you’re never really fearing for anyone’s life. The jump scares sure are scary and there are moments that pop at you when you’ve receded to comfort, but even these moment don’t risk all that much in terms of the safety of these people you’ve come to care for. 

In a sense, even the pace of the film contributes to the feeling of watching a predictable exorcism movie. With several scenes written around the imminent dangers of the mother walking into her daughter’s room, the surprises remain confided, showing us just how worse she has become. So when a respected Priest enters this equation to perform the actual exorcism, the novelty is just that he’s doing it over the Internet rather than in person. The larger scares too that come in later bring with it a feeling of déjà vu. Floating bodies, the sound of burning skin and the eery feeling evoked by desperate prayers do not have the effect it once had, more so when the exorcism itself appears to take place rather smoothly.

Other angles, like the possession of the young girl, are treated like exposition and the form never allows for moments of self-doubt and introspection because that doesn’t fit into the possibilities of a video call. Even so, you feel you’re just a second away from seeing or hearing something you do not want to, pushing you back into the darkest days of Covid where all of us have had to deal with inner demons of our own. It’s a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way and when the making-style contributes, you feel fear like you haven’t yet before. But when it doesn’t, it’s the boredom of ghosts past that get to you first.    

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'Connect' review: This Nayanthara-starrer scares all right

Connect is Nayanthara's second film after Maya with director Ashwin Saravanan

Connect begins by a beach, as waves crash the shore. Somebody is strumming a guitar, and a girl – Ammu aka Anna, played by Haniya Nafisa – is heard humming a tune. Meen kannadi thottikkul thedum oar kadale vazhava meaning 'life for a fish who is searching for the ocean inside an aquarium'.

As she sings, her parents Susan, played by Nayanthara, and Joseph Benoy, played by Vinay Rai, talk about her going to the London Trinity College to learn music. Her father and mother disagree. Joseph, a doctor, gets a call from the hospital and gets to work. It is the Covid outbreak and Joseph works 24x7, without going back home. He begins treating Covid patients. Susan and Ammu get confined inside the four walls of their house. The three connect through Zoom and online calls. Susan’s father Arthur Samuel, played by Sathyaraj, too connects with them over the phone. Soon, Joseph dies of Covid. Ammu who is attached to her father, becomes distraught. To overcome her loneliness, she tries to reach out to him through an ouija board. Whether she meets her father, what happens to Ammu and how does Susan deal with it all, forms the rest of the story.

Nayanthara is once again at her best in delivering whatever the director wanted. The fear in her eyes - sometimes as she looks for her daughter in a dark room, or when she turns the cross that is upside down, or when she prays while being terrified – is palpable. While it is her second film after Maya with director Ashwin Saravanan, for the latter it is his fourth - three of which have been horror flicks. Connect often gets scary, thanks especially to Nafisa's brilliant portrayal of Ammu.

Most of the shots are in dark rooms, the only light coming from the candles.

With the film revolving around the three characters, in the backdrop of the lockdown, 99 minutes might seem long.

Film: Connect

Language: Tamil

Director: Ashwin Saravanan

Cast: Nayanthara, Anupam Kher, Sathyaraj and others

Rating: 3/5

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Connect Review: Nayanthara Shines Bright In A Dystopian Drama That Thrives In The Dark

Connect review: the film connects with the audience in substantial ways without having to resort to the kind of in-your-face means that horror films usually foist upon the audience..

Cast: Nayanthara, Sathyaraj, Anupam Kher, Vinay Rai

Director: Ashwin Saravanan

Rating: Three stars (out of 5)

A supernatural thriller set in the time of Covid, Ashwin Saravanan's Connect has its share of jump scares as well as other genre tics. But, if you can tide over the ritualistic babble that it culminates in, it isn't one of those predictable, hackneyed horror films that merely seek to shock us out of our seats.

The screenplay, authored by the husband-wife writing team of Saravanan and Kaavya Ramkumar, alternates between the sombre and the nightmarish. The impact of the range of feelings that the film arouses is heightened significantly by the steady understated power of the lead performance by Nayanthara.

She shines bright in a dystopian drama that thrives in the dark. She uses her eyes and facial expressions rather than shrieks and squeals to convey fear and foreboding as the unknown creeps up on the sorted and unflappable woman she plays.

Connect , produced by Vignesh Sivan's Rowdy Pictures and released nationwide in Hindi a week after the original Tamil version hit the screen, weaves into its story of disease, death, divinity and the devil a complement of unsettling twitches that are triggered by a Covid-related tragedy and girl's response to it.

God and Satan are at war in a world torn asunder by sickness and sorrow. A little girl faces the brunt. A tormented woman fights to save her daughter. A grandfather offers constant advice online. An electronically connected pastor steps in to try and exorcise the evil spirit. Amid all the blather, the film stays firmly focussed on the mother-daughter relationship.

The emotional bond between the two women is thrown into complete disarray by a demonic possession. The script employs the bedevilment as a metaphor for a rampaging, devastating virus. The connect between the two is verbalised by the exorcist himself.

With its loud thuds, persistent knocks on the door, mysterious rumbles, fluttering curtains, flickering lights, eerie shadows in the dark, upturned objects, the works, the 99-minute Connect banks upon all the devices that one would expect in a horror film. Yet it manages to break away at crucial points from the practices ordinarily associated with the spooky business of peddling fear and heightening anxieties.

Connect , which reunites director Saravanan with lead actor Nayanthara after the 2015 neo-noir psychological drama Maya, examines dimensions of loss and grief through an occult phenomenon that that sets off a disquieting chain of events for a quarantining woman, Susan, and her young musician-daughter, Anna.

The pandemic and the lockdown have taken their toll on both. But the nature of the impact on the two isn't the same. The mother, to begin with, seems completely unperturbed by the crisis that hits her - and the world at large. The daughter, severely distressed, goes into a shell, an act that renders her vulnerable to a Satanic invasion.

Talking of an invasion, the possession of a human by the devil is akin in Connect to a home invasion by a hostile force from another world. Disease is a demon, and vice-versa, and it pushes Anna into an abyss from where only an exorcist can rescue her.

The two women are in separate rooms but the changes that Anna undergoes send ripples not only through the entire house in which they isolate themselves from the world and from each other, but also through the spaces that Susan's father Arthur (Sathyaraj) and a pastor-exorcist (Anupam Kher) occupy.

Connect is Saravanan's third directorial venture. He has established himself as a genre filmmaker with a distinct, novel style marked by keen empathy for women fighting off hurtful forces. In Maya, a single mother who works in ad films to make ends meet is haunted by a ghost.

In Game Over (2019), starring Taapsee Pannu, the heroine is a talented game developer grappling with PTSD, a direct consequence of a horrific rape.

In Connect , Saravanan portrays two women - one a mid-career professional in a position of authority, the other a gifted young girl looking forward to making a career as a musician. The latter's youthful hurry to branch out on her own creates friction between her and her mother, who is firm in her belief that the girl must complete her education before leaving home to pursue her dream.

Saravanan, with the aid of cinematographer Manikantan Krishnamachary, engages visuals, an interplay light and shade, skewed camera angles and movements and sound effects to conjure up an atmosphere of great unease and dread.

The film's early scenes, which are happy and filled with warmth as the family vacations in Goa, quickly give way to intimations of the dangers up ahead. The pandemic, and the lockdown that it necessitates, yanks Anna's doting dad, Dr. Joseph Benoy (Vinay Rai), away from the family because the hospital needs him to be on duty 24X7.

The characters from here on are unable to make physical contact with each other. They converse on Zoom calls. The restrictions on physical interactions inevitably lead to unnerving distancing and disorientation. The doctor can connect with his wife and child only through digital means. Anna, the youngest, is the worst affected by the sudden forced separation.

Susan and Anna are suspected to be Covid-positive. As they await their test reports, they isolate within the house while they keep in touch with the girl's grandfather. Susan and her dad soon begin to feel that something is seriously wrong with Anna. They seek help on her behalf.

Nayanthara stellar performance is supported admirably by Sathyaraj and Anupam Kher. Newcomer Haniya Nafisa, cast in the challenging role of a girl possessed, is no less impressive.

When the confrontation between the devout and the diabolic reaches a crescendo, the pitch of the film is amped up considerably. Connect is never, however, in danger of drowning in shrillness because at all other times, the director does not budge from his controlled and muted methods to tell a story that vacillates between the real and the spectral.

Connect connects with the audience in substantial ways without having to resort to the kind of in-your-face means that horror films usually foist upon the audience.

• Cast Nayanthara, Sathyaraj, Anupam Kher, Vinay Rai
• Director Ashwin Saravanan

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