Trending Movie Review: When a film is titled Trending and its protagonists are influencers, it has two clear routes to take. One, it walks the didactic path, delivering a cautionary tale about the perils of social media. Or two, it turns into a thriller, throwing its leads into dangerous territory and pulling us to the edge of our seats. Trending, starring Kalaiyarasan and Priyalaya, attempts to strike a balance between both these worlds. Unfortunately, it fails to engage, thanks to a complete lack of logic and an overstretched runtime.

Director: Sivaraj

Cast: Kalaiyarasan, Priyalaya, Prem

Arjun (Kalaiyarasan) and Meera (Priyalaya) are an influencer couple whose YouTube channel has made them rich enough to quit their jobs, buy a plush villa, and cruise around in a high-end car. But the dream is short-lived. One morning, their channel is suddenly deactivated, and loan sharks come knocking. So, when a stranger offers them a chance to participate in a reality game, they bite. Of course, the game is riddled with sinister twists and turns.

If Trending were a social media platform, its intriguing premise would be the promising content, and the illogical decisions made by the lead couple would be the bad algorithm. Even though losing their channel doesn’t exactly render them homeless, Arjun and Meera still decide to play a game proposed by a random stranger, and then continue playing even as it begins to tear apart their lives and relationship. The film wants to speak about human greed, but it’s a hard sell when a husband is willing to risk his wife’s life for money. Their desperation isn’t convincingly established, which makes it tough to root for—or even care about—the couple. With every passing scene, their decisions grow increasingly nonsensical, dragging the film down with them.

Social media content is known to work best when it is short, sharp, and hooks the audience enough to be consumed in one go. Ironically, Trending, a film that revolves around social media, fails to apply its own subject’s most effective strategy—brevity. Clocking in at 147 minutes, the film somehow manages to say both too much and too little. It leaves the audience to decipher the inhuman lengths people can go when greed takes the wheel. Yet, the path it takes to arrive at that point feels like a tedious seminar. The first half does well enough to establish that the game is twisted and dangerous. But the makers continue to labour over just how deranged it can get with every passing round. Even as the game dominates the narrative, we wonder if the thriller element will eventually take over. Instead, the film limps to a rather uninspired ending—complete with sequel bait and a blink-and-miss cameo.

Kalaiyarasan and Priyalaya are mostly convincing as Arjun and Meera, but the script doesn’t do them any favours. It never earns them likes, shares, or even new followers. They’re made to enact emotionally charged moments that often land with the emotional impact of a scripted Instagram reel: polished but hollow. With the entire runtime almost entirely riding on these two characters, the writing does little to flesh them out. We are neither moved by their choices nor invested in the aftermath of their actions.

With a subject that’s both timely and urgent, Trending does to its premise what inconsistency and inactivity do to a social media account. As the audience, we find ourselves rooting for the influencer couple on screen, just as we do for our favourite content creators, scrolling day after day in search of something fresh and real. But instead, we are forced to watch a slow collapse, of their journey, of the thrills, and eventually, of the film itself. When the credits roll, Trending feels less like a compelling feature and more like a reel we swipe past. Forgettable. Fleeting. And ironically, not trending-worthy.