Ratsasan
Ratsasan is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language crime thriller film directed by Ram Kumar. The film features Vishnu Vishal and Amala Paul, while Saravanan, Kaali Venkat, and Ramdoss play supporting roles. The film tells the story of an aspiring film director who becomes a police officer after his father's death and tries to track down a serial killer. The film was a blockbuster, receiving highly positive reviews and ran successfully in theatres.
The film features music and background score composed by Ghibran, cinematography by P. V. Shankar and editing by San Lokesh. Production began in November 2016, with principal photography starting in June 2017. The film released on 5 October 2018, to mostly positive reviews from audience, and also became a commercial success, grossing 23 crore worldwide.
Ratsasan was remade in Telugu as Rakshasudu directed by Ramesh Varma with Bellamkonda Sreenivas and Anupama Parameswaran playing the lead roles.
Plot
The film opens with two old men discovering a corpse which happened to be a teenage school girl named Samyuktha, a 15-year-old school student who was found brutally murdered and wrapped in a polythene bag.Arun Kumar is an aspiring filmmaker who wants to make a movie on psychopaths. After being rejected many times despite having a good script and due to pressure from his family, he decides to give up his dreams and become an Assistant Sub-Inspector with the help of his brother-in-law, Doss, a police officer himself. He moves and stay with his sister Kokila, Prasad, and their daughter Ammu. Ammu gets into trouble when she makes Arun forge her father's signature in her report card as she failed in two subjects. Her class teacher Viji figures this out and thinks that she signed it herself. Ammu brings Arun to her school to act as her father. Later, which Ammu is caught by her parents, this leads them to transfer their daughter to another school. Later, Arun meets and befriends Viji and her niece Kayal, who is speech deprived.
A teenage school girl named Amudha is abducted on her way back home. Her parents then find a mutilated doll's head in a gift box attached to their dog's collar. Arun finds a similarity between Samyuktha, who was murdered few days ago, and Amudha, both of them being 15-year-old school students who were kidnapped while returning home from school. Just like Samyuktha, the hair on the doll's forehead is uprooted, the eyes are drilled, and her mouth is damaged. Apart from that, in particular, there is a knife mark on Samyuktha's forehead, ears and nasion. The same marks were found in the doll's face. He tries to convince ACP Lakshmi, his superior egotistical officer, that this was a psycho at work, but his theories are brushed off as fake stories.
Later, Amudha's corpse was found brutally mutilated. The killer drilled out Amudha's eyes, broke her teeth, and uprooted her hair in patches. On top of that, Amudha's body was scarred all over with a knife while she was alive. Arun suggests the corpses be hidden from the public to prevent the killer from gaining public attention. Initially, the officials opposed this idea owing to breaking protocols, but they eventually give in, moving the bodies to a secret facility under Dr. Nandan. Soon after, another school girl named Meera is abducted. She happened to be from Ammu's ex-school. The search leads to a teacher named Inbaraj, who works at Ammu's current school and is revealed to be a paedophile who forces schoolgirls into irrumatio. Arun encounters Inbaraj trying to molest Ammu and beats him up before detaining him. Inbaraj admits to being a sexual predator but denies having anything to do with the murders. In a bid to escape, he holds Venkat, a policeman, at gunpoint. Arun manages to gun Inbaraj down inside the lift thereby saving Venkat.
Meanwhile, Ammu is abducted during her birthday party at home. Arun and Doss try to find her but they were too late. Arun discovers her mutilated body in their own car trunk, implying that she is also killed. To make things worse, Arun is suspended for his negligence on shooting Inbaraj. Dejected and angry, Arun investigates the case by himself, with the help from a few policemen. Finding an audio clip from the hearing aid of Meera, he traces it back to an old lady magician named Annabella George's performance at the victim's school function. The lady used her magic show as a tool to kidnap the girls since she impressed all the students with her magic tricks. She invites one student to perform an act and then interacted with the selected student to get closer to them. Then, she started to stalk the selected student leading to their kidnap exactly on the second day after meeting them, without any hassle. This leads him to the next potential victim, a schoolgirl named Sanjana. Arun realised that he was following the wrong girl due to Sanjana having a twin sister. Sanjana was abducted, even though she was under surveillance. Arun tracks her location to a house in the city, where he narrowly saves Sanjana from being murdered. The perpetrator escapes, but her identity is revealed to be Mary Fernandez, who was involved in a killing a long time ago. Arun finds more about the case from the investigating officer, Rajamanickkam,, a retired cop.
Mary's son Christopher had been afflicted with Werner Syndrome i.e., a hormonal disorder that caused him to look aged. He was an outcast at school, but a girl named Sophie took pity on him and befriended him. Christopher soon began to develop feelings for Sophie, but unfortunately, he is heartbroken when she turns down his love and is soon ridiculed at school. The next day, Mary asked Sophie to become friends again and handed her a gift. When Sophie opens the gift box, she found the mutilated head of a doll, the very same doll Sophie gifted Christopher for his birthday. Sophie was brutally murdered by Mary, and both Mary and her son were arrested.
It was then told that both Mary and Christopher died in an accident, but she is still alive and murdering with the same vengeance. Rajamanickkam finds a clue in the files but is killed by Mary before meeting Arun. On finding him at the scene of the crime, Arun is detained and kept handcuffed at the station. He discovers that Rajamanickkam was trying to reveal that the person who had been performing the magic show in the school had six fingers on left hand and by a photo evidence, it is known that it was Christopher who has six fingers. Since only Mary died in the accident, the psycho is not the lady; it is her own son Christopher, who has taken advantage of his aged appearance. Before Arun can act on this, Christopher attacks Viji and abducts Kayal. While trying to apprehend Christopher, Venkat is killed. Kayal escapes and is found by Nandan, who tries to hide her in the facility, but Nandan dies trying to protect her. Arun tracks down Christopher to the facility, and after a prolonged fight, manages to kill him and save Kayal.
The movie ends with the media reporting the chain of events and an end to the murders done by the psychopath. It is then revealed that Arun gets a chance to make a movie about a psychopath fulfilling his dream.
Cast
Production
Following the release of the comedy drama Mundasupatti, Ramkumar was keen to do a serious film to avoid being type-cast. He was inspired to write a film on a psycho killer after reading an international news story about Alexander Spesivtsev, and spent close to a year writing a fictional screenplay to fit around the character of a psycho killer. Ramkumar initially struggled to find an actor to play the lead role of a forty-year-old man with a child, and despite working the child out of the script as a result, he still found it difficult to convince actors to sign the film. In April 2017, actor Jai signed the project titled Ratchasan, which was set to be produced by C. V. Kumar of Thirukumaran Entertainment. However soon after the actor and director dropped out of the project, and Kumar took the title of Ratchasan with him. Subsequently, throughout the production stage, the film was briefly known as Cinderella and then Minmini, but neither title was kept. The former title was claimed by another Tamil film's producers, while Ramkumar felt the latter seemed too light-hearted. Eventually, the team members managed to amicably convince Kumar to offer them the title of Ratchasan, which was later stylised to Ratsasan.Ramkumar chose to make the film with producer Dilli Babu and starring Vishnu in July 2017. Amala Paul joined the cast of the film in late November 2017, with production starting thereafter. In June 2017, the title of the film was changed to Raatchasan. in association with T-series
Soundtrack
composed the soundtrack and background score of Ratsasan. He began composing the soundtrack in early 2017. He also finished composing the theme music for the film's teaser in August 2018. The album features four songs composed by Ghibran and lyrics written by Umadevi, Ramkumar, Ratnakumar and GKB. One song "Kaadhal Kadal Dhana", was released as a single on 15 September 2018. The song written by Umadevi and rendered by Sathyaprakash and Chaitra H.G. received positive reviews from music listeners. It topped into the #1 position at the Radio Mirchi Top 20 Countdown, for nearly 4 weeks. Following that, a video song of the same was telecast on 30 September 2018, through Isaiaruvi channel at 4:30 p.m. IST.The album was released on 27 September 2018, at the Suryan FM Radio Station, Chennai featuring the composer and other crew members present during the crew members present in the event. The film's soundtrack was commended by the audience and critics. M Suganth from The Times of India, gave a positive review for the soundtrack and stated "Kaadhal Kadal Dhana" as "a romantic melody, a genre that Ghibran is a master at. Slow and lullaby-like, the persistent strings in the background are soothing, and despite distinct arrangements, the vocals are pronounced enough to make an impact."