L2: Empuraan review NO SPOILERS

Saw Empuraan First Day First Show at Central Talkies at 6 in the morning. The insane hype built up for it over the past few years, the promotional campaigns that followed, posters, interviews, press meets and most importantly, the immense pressure and expectations to keep up and even surpass what can be called the 21st century's magnum opus of Malayalam cinema and its predecessor: Lucifer.

From beginning to end, you will be completely engaged; you won't know that 3 hours have passed. There's no shortage of background score, which is amazingly done- kudos to Deepak Dev and team. At the same time, it was heavily overused to the point where it became annoying. On the directional front, it was quite commendable, even if we keep aside the fact that this is the director's third project.

As for the story, the first half is essentially the build-up for the second half, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is so good and engaging that it holds up with Lucifer.  This is like a double-edged sword; the movie will slay the box office if the momentum is continued from the first half. When you have set the bar so high, it is instinctual to compare it with that and feel that this is not that nice, but it is good, and it finally leaves a subtle bittersweet taste in your mouth.

The production here is insane; no compromises there, so many locations, and there being so much of everything, I feel characters had less screen time and dialogues. Changing between the past and present was smooth and didn't feel unnatural at all. 

 

At the end of the day, if you ask me, will you watch it again? My answer is I will, maybe even twice, but not at 6 AM in the morning. 

Final note: movie interpretation is a very subjective matter, so take it all with a grain of salt. In other words, one person likes one movie and another hates it, but the movie is the same, so watch it and experience it yourself.

Cheers