Recommended For You Review: Amazon Mini TV's latest short film doesn't give the chills and thrills

2/5

Story: Pranav is casually surfing on the internet and watching online videos at home when he comes across a mysterious video in the recommended videos section. What happens next is a series of events that turn his life upside down.

Review: As the title suggests, Amazon mini TV's latest offering, Recommended For You, revolves around the nefarious world of online gaming. In the short film, which spans around 25 minutes, we see a young Pranav (Ayush Mehra), idly spending his time watching videos online at his home. When he is watching the video of a road accident, he suddenly ends up clicking on a mysterious video in the recommended videos section. And what follows is a journey down the deep dark alleys of the abominable online gaming world, where people do not have any qualms about killing each other. As Ayush clicks on the continue button, one after the other, the killing spree continues.

Ayush, who first seems to be basking in the victory of his fresh 'killings' on screen, soon realises that his real-life friends and family are his next target to emerge victorious in the game. Pranav is now in a spot of bother, and wants to protect his friends and family at any cost. He frantically makes a call to their mobile phones, trying his best to warn them about the impending danger and death. And when it's the turn of his mother to be on screen, all hell breaks loose. Will he be able to save his mother or not? The show ends in a cliffhanger, leaving the audience to do the guesswork.

Amazon mini TV's Recommended For You, directed by Shamik Sengupta, begins on a promising note and manages to succeed in building up the tension around what we are about to witness on screen along with the protagonist of the show, Pranav. The plot is quite simple and the makers steer clear of convoluted storytelling. Right in the beginning of the show, it makes you sit up and take notice of the big bad cyber world, where crimes happen at the click of a button.

However, the plot gradually loses the fizz after a few minutes because it tends to become quite predictable. For starters, the story isn't something that we haven't witnessed already. The perils of killer online games and the mental and emotional effects that they have on people, is something that has been covered extensively. Even though the makers have left the show in a cliffhanger, it's quite easy for the viewer to predict the end, unless the makers have planned a sequel to reveal the big surprise. Too many pop-ups appearing on screen during the short film, can end up confusing some who aren't really familiar with the theme of the film.

Ayush Mehra manages to come up with a decent performance as the game addict Pranav. The way he excitedly plugs in the charger when his laptop runs out of charge to continue the killer game and the way he desperately tries to do his bit to save his family and friends from trouble, comes across as convincing. The background score, too, complements the eerie theme of the show. However, at certain stages, the film comes across as an amateurish piece of work that could have looked better, had it had a better screenplay and finer filmmaking, to keep the audience glued to their seats. Recommeded For You doesn't really hold the audience's attention.

Verdict: Recommendend For You has nothing new to offer!