Lucky Review: This Natasha Kermani Directorial Is A Morbid Monotonous Meditation On Muliebrity
Here is our review for Lucky starring Brea Grant, Hunter C. Smith, Dhruv Uday Singh, Yasmine Al-Bustami and directed by Natasha Kermani
This is one helluva frustrating, angering film. Angering, because it seems too closely trapped in its own rage to gauge the feelings of the characters who come into the plot. And frustrating, because most of the time we are watching the same violent incident happening over and over again in a loop.
It’s like being in a feverish dream where we see the same episode repeatedly. There is no escaping the monotony of domestic violence. We hear you. Except that the one perpetrating the violence on our heroine May (Bea Grant, who also wrote the screenplay) is not her husband.
Before we move on, I must say I found the casting of May’s husband to be more interesting than anything else in the film. He is played by an Indian actor of no great talent Dhruv Uday Singh. But his name is ‘Ted’ and his Indian origins are not of any relevance to the plot, as ‘Ted’ disappears after the first ten minutes. May is left alone in a large house with a stalker/hunter billed in the credits as ‘The Man’ who visits and attacks her every night.
Every night she overpowers him and beats him down to the bloodied ground. And still he is back the next night, and the next…Wait! Could this stalker be a figment of May’s imagination? She is a writer, though not a fiction-horror writer. I wish she was. Maybe then she could have written a book on her experience with the stalker/hunter which I am sure, would be far more interesting than this film which is as monotonous as the act of violence that it repeats ad nauseam.
Is the Man a manifestation of May’s fear of domestic violence? Has ‘Ted’ been physically abusive with his wife? (Shame on you, Dhruv). Is that why she sees the Man each night as a human embodiment of her innermost fears of being assaulted?
Nothing except the director’s determination to not let her protagonist appear deluded, is clear in the plot. Absurdist of all is ‘Ted’ leaving his wife in the house alone when she is being attacked every night. Could Ted actually be the Man? Don’t look for answers in the climax which is as ambiguous and dark as can be, giving the concept of the ‘mask’ an all-new twist at a time when it(the mask) has become an integral part of our lives.
Lucky struck me as a highly stilted awkward and self-aware thriller. I know it has a deep secret message about violence against women. But to get there, we have to trudge through tons of subterfuge and false leads. Really not worth it.
Image source: IMDb
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