‘CTRL’ review: A gripping thriller about data privacy in the age of AI
Vikramaditya Motwane’s screenlife film stars Ananya Panday and Vihaan Samat.
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
In her short career, Ananya Panday has been the most impressive in a film about social media. In Arjun Varain Singh’s Kho Gaye Hum Kahan (2023), Panday is wholly convincing as well as a Gen Z exemplar struggling to balance her perfect public persona with her messy self.
In Vikramaditya Motwane’s new movie CTRL, Panday is once again superb as a social media influencer trapped between the real and the make-believe. Motwane’s Hindi movie cleverly deploys its young cast for a thought-provoking examination of the sinister aspects of artificial intelligence.
Nella (Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat) are best friends, lovers and business partners. Together, they create schmaltzy moments that boost their online profiles that are then parleyed into lucrative influencer videos. If there ever was a line between love and work, it has been long been erased for this camera-friendly couple.
A bump in the relationship compels Nella into signing away her privacy to an app called CTRL. The AI avatar Allen (voiced by Aparshakti Khurana) promises to be a new friend, philosopher and guide. Just as surely as Allen is an anagram for Nella, CTRL isn’t the tech Utopia Nella thinks it is.
The 99-minute screenlife movie is based on a story by Avinash Sampath and a screenplay by Sampath and...
