WWW review: A needlessly melodramatic, disastrous cyber thriller

1/5

Story:

Vishwa, Ashraf, Sadha and Christy are friends and colleagues at a firm, who connect online for work. Vishwa, the team leader, is curious when Christy is joined by a new roommate at her house, Mithra, a gifted painter. Vishwa goes the extra mile to connect with Mithra through desperate conversations. Expectedly, the two are head over heels in love with one another soon, just that they date virtually. Their plans to meet offline are thwarted when a nationwide lockdown is announced. All hell breaks loose when a stranger breaks into Christy's household. To what length will Vishwa go to save his beloved?

Review:

Filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty paved a way for a new genre of sorts with his directorial debut Searching, which was one of the first computer screen thrillers to have hit the cinemas. While the film did get its due then, the popularity of the genre sky-rocketed during the pandemic when filmmakers were left with nothing but computer screens, gadgets in their households and utilised it to their advantage to make films, shows (Fahadh Faasil's C U Soon and Voot's The Gone Game). The genre makes a delayed debut to the Telugu land with WWW, a giant bore of a cyber-thriller that makes you wonder what the fuss was all about.

Most of the computer screen thrillers deal with a similar premise - a loved one is in danger and the person at the other end needs to move mountains to protect them, albeit virtually. WWW has very little going for it. Vishwa is so desperate for a girl that he falls for Mithra's voice for the first time, without even getting to see her. The guy is a painful flirt, trying every trick in the book to woo her and the girl too looks equally option-less to fall for his advances. The girl being a painter gifts him a Radha Krishna painting to confirm her interest in him. Oh, how poetic? You wish.

Just when the proceedings get too cheesy to handle, there's a smart twist that keeps you hooked - the only moment that works in a barely 100-minute long film. The mysterious past of the lead characters puts Mithra in a spot of bother. The premise hinges on the special connection that Vishwa and Mithra share - only that the viewer doesn't sense it at all. The antagonist tries to settle scores with Vishwa using his loved one and the ultimate reveal is one big yawn. You don't know what's worse - the plot or the acting chops of the lead cast.

When the filmmaker wants to bring in a sense of urgency and tension into the screenplay, the characters keep shouting things like 'I need their address right now, immediately!' The villain is so old-school that he looks like a character who took a time machine from the 1970s to land in 2021. It's the 21st century and it's still the vulnerable girl who needs to be rescued by the ever-sacrificing man. When will this male-saviour complex end? The only thing novel about the film is that it unfolds on a computer screen amid a lockdown. Otherwise, the storytelling is old as the hills.

You keep wondering if the director of WWW is the same KV Guhan who helmed a decent thriller like 118 not so long ago. The usually reliable Adith Arun struggles to carry the film on his shoulders and falters with his script choice yet again. Shivani Rajashekar, in what's a scenario quite similar to her debut Adbhutam, is cast in a poorly written role that can't even be salvaged by her earnestness. Viva Harsha gets to play the regular sidekick who has nothing much to do. 

Talents like Divya Sripada, Satyam Rajesh, Riyaz Khan and Priyadarshi are wasted in inconsequential characters. The biggest disappointment however is the casting of Kannada actor Sandeep Bharadwaj as an antagonist who speaks Telugu with a strange accent and fails to evoke even the slightest of sympathy with his backstory. Simon K King's music, including the songs and the intense background score, is the only silver lining. Mirchi Kiran's dialogues are strictly okay.

Verdict:

WWW is a cyber-thriller that offers very little novelty or entertainment value. The story is ridiculous, while the amateurish performances add more insult to injury. Good music apart, there's hardly any reason you need to watch this. A strict no-no!