Navarasa Review: Inmai - Hurried end to a promising premise

Inmai is interesting—that much is for sure. The Rumi poem at the beginning, about how fear is the non-acceptance of uncertainty, is deep enough, and sets the mood from the very beginning. I enjoyed that little conversation at the beginning about calligraphy, and as an extension, the whole Islam angle in this film—which shouldn’t feel so fresh in our cinema, but on account of the limited exploration of the religion in our cinema, it does.

Rasa: Bayam (Fear)

Director: Rathindran R. Prasad

Cast: Siddharth, Parvathy

Streaming on: Netflix

The setting, the music, the clothes, the nature of the evil… All of it is what you don’t usually get and is a large part of any enjoyment arising from this film. Vishal Bhardwaj’s music is a strength too, as is how this film gets treated visually—green being a dominant colour across this film for obvious reasons.

Wait, what about the theme of fear, you ask? The exploration in this film is through a character who, we learn, has forever lived in fear of retribution. The problem though is, you don’t necessarily get much information about the nature of her suffering. You get the what, you don’t really get the how. There’s the mandatory flashback, the mandatory twist… And the film hurries into its end, its underwhelming, seemingly hurried resolution leaving an unpleasant aftertaste that’s quite unfair to the film.