CTRL review: An innovative, clever, unsettling and hard-hitting commentary on the digital era!

Vikramaditya Motwane's CTRL is a timely, seamlessly crafted screenlife thriller that delves into our unnerving dependency on the digital world, exploring the dichotomy of influencer culture and the alienating, addictive future of technology.

With each new wave of technological advancement, a fear has always accompanied it. When machines arrived, there was anxiety about human labour being rendered obsolete. With computers, it was the threat of mass unemployment. And now, in the age of social media and AI, the fear has evolved into something more personal—a world where our digital lives might soon overshadow our real ones. But the true terror isn't just about technology taking control; it's about how willingly we give up that control. CTRL plunges deep into this dilemma, using the screenthriller format to confront us with the unsettling reality of our increasing reliance on digital spaces, only to go beyond this and ask a larger, existential question: Are we controlling our lives with the aid of technology or are we made to believe that so that we surrender our control to technology run by people in power who want to dictate everything?

On the surface, the plot seems straightforward. Nella Awasthi (Ananya Panday), a social media star who runs the NJOY channel with her college sweetheart Joy Mascarenhas (Vihaan Samat), finds herself in a state of spiral after discovering Joy’s infidelity—while she was live streaming their anniversary surprise, no less. Determined to erase him from her life, Nella turns to an AI assistant, Allen (Aparshakti Khurana), from an app called Take Control of Your Life. The app does its job so well that Joy doesn't just vanish from her social media—he disappears from real life, too. As bizarre as this sounds, it's not inconceivable, primarily in a world where deep-fake videos exist!

This is where the film reflects the beauty of the carefully thought-out and crafted world that Vikramaditya Motwane and co-writer Avinash Sampath have built, which goes beyond just putting the dangers and repercussions of screenlife onscreen talking about a long-term impact where digital life has become so entangled with reality that it's hard to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. And this capitalist society with man-child tech moguls in vulture-like corporates are just sitting to take advantage of this. It's like the thrilling political commentary world of Searching met the thematic emotional world of Her and Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind only to give birth to something new!

The film is packaged as a satire in which Nella's casual, breezy, and unserious life suddenly becomes a mysterious, vigilante thriller about a whistleblower uncovering the dark truth behind a giant company's scam as if things were hiding in plain sight or finer print. It just needed to be read, just like the terms and conditions that none of us bother to read before clicking 'I agree'. This clever way of telling a story also helps in deep-diving into the dichotomic influencer culture and the politics of influencing! It uses Nella’s story of being a small-town girl with big aspirations who stumbles into the world of internet fame to probe the influencer culture that thrives on control as currency. Influencers like Nella, who have their entire life recorded online, control their followers' perceptions while, paradoxically, are controlled by the constant need for validation and engagement. And when life starts to exist more for Instagram than for oneself, the line between reality and fabrication becomes dangerously blurred. The cracks begin to be seen, and the fragility of online fame that is just as fickle as it is accessible surfaces as Nella's fantasy love story with Joy to her rise from the publicly trolling break-up as a solo "kween" here to "slay" starts to be visible more as curated as content then life lived on screen!

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The film’s screenlife format is easy to track and innovative, unfolding entirely through digital interfaces—laptops, smartphones, and social media feeds while utilizing this structure to amplify CTRL's themes. The act of being constantly watched by an AI transforms into a metaphor for the deeper human need to be seen and heard. Moreover, the film's strength also lies in its understanding of the social media generation of Gen Z and the level of detailing in painting a remarkably and disturbingly close-to-reality picture without being condescending, from bringing in real content creators from Yashraj Mukhate, Tanmay Bhatt, Rohan Joshi and more to creating an entire series of memes, Reels, and reactions, bringing the film much closer to our everyday lives that are spent on endlessly doom-scrolling 'content' on Instagram. 

Ananya Panday, as Nella, nails the role of the clueless, angsty, and attention-hungry influencer who is as pretentious on camera as she is real without it. She reigns in lived-in experiences and on the audience's perception of her skillfully. Vihaan Samat, as morally ambiguous vigilante Joy, and Aparshakti Khurana, with his unsettling AI presence and old uncle jokes, bring out the best in their characters. But the film’s technical elements steal the limelight off—Pratik Shah's cinematography, Jahaan Noble's editing, and Sidharth Meer's colour work—blend seamlessly, giving the film a polished, immersive feel and flow, which becomes more than necessary in a movie where life is happening in digital boxes. Even the VFX team has created moments with much attention to detail and narrative build-up, so much so that Joy being digitally erased from Nella's life feels haunting!

CTRL worked for me more as a warning sign and the disquieting realization that the world it depicts is not far from ours because, as much as we might try to maintain control over our lives, the reality is that our virtual selves are becoming more powerful and influential than ever. Hence, a much deeper issue surfaces concerning the control technology has over us- our resignation to it! After all, it's far easier to retreat into a world of digital illusions than to confront real life's messy and painful realities. But suppose C U Soon was a compelling screenlife thriller that showed how digital footprint could help in trouble. In that case, this gaze into Nella's life through her screens becomes so close to a horrific reality that you might want to log out and shut down all your screens after the credits roll. Ironically, this film about the dangers of being online has been released on a digital platform—an eerie reminder that whether we like it or not, our screens will continue to shape our realities!

CTRL is currently streaming on Netflix! 

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