Trapped: Different but predictable

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa

Rated: 5/10

To carry a two-hour movie as an edgy thriller from an inaccessible two-room 37th storey abandoned apartment with just one human, a rat, a cockroach, two pigeons and a handful of ants is a difficult proposition. But it’s a proposition Hollywood has experimented and sometimes even been successful with.

For Bollywood, and Rajkummar Rao, it was a first. For a first-time effort, it was by and large a good gripper. But the problem lies not with the film or its execution, but the fact that it has been made for an audience that has no attention-staying powers and is largely ill at ease with such subjects.

For the Indian audience at large, to be with the film that feeds on the monotony of isolation is a difficulty factor which only a handful of discerning viewers can tame.

After renting a 37th floor apartment in an uninhabited building, Rao feels he has the ring in the girl’s hand finally but all goes wrong once he gets locked in his new apartment with no one to come to his rescue. The predictability of what has to follow is what mars this hatke effort of the director.

So we know there will be desperation, depression and finally a survival drill that one will have to sit through, like urine drinking to beat thirst, vomiting, talking to rats, getting inspiration from roaches and a pure vegetarian killing for hunger! Rao does it all with a lot of realism though getting to the end of the film becomes burdensome and much too prolonged. A Hollywood effort with no Bollywood in it is experimental and tentative as a success story even though there is an emerging audience for such stuff.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 19 March, 2017