It was a rocky start. While The Collingswood Story (2002) is considered the very first of the genre, “screenlife” only became a spottable term in the mid-2010s, with Unfriended (2014) being one of the first “big” productions to popularise the genre. Though such a title didn’t receive much acclaim, it testified to the genre’s great difficulty in being pulled off. Cinephiles tutted on the sidelines as many made futile attempts to produce something watchable (with perhaps the only true exception since being Searching (2018)). 

Then Bollywood came to the rescue. Chirpy folk music introduces us to Nella (Ananya Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat) in the opening montage in Vikramaditya Motwane’s CTRL, laying down the foundations for a narrative that comes quicker than one would anticipate. The sudden lack of music is unsettling even as on-screen personalities remain the same; this audio cue (or loss of) prepares us for a pivotal moment of betrayal. Panday is fantastic at portraying the whirring emotions of Nella: “He jokingly said he’ll always be my rock. Now I want to smash his head with that same rock.” And from there, the story truly begins.

Humour is sewn with realism and a true understanding of the state of current internet culture: something a lot of films trying too hard to be up to date miss the mark on. Examples of this include – but are not limited to – Nella’s memed rampage being turned into song, and unapologetic podcast bros joking about the drama. 

The writing, particularly between Allen (voiced by Aparshakti Khurana) and Nella is surprisingly charming, and though we’re not meant to adore the AI bots trying to take control over everything, Allen makes a pretty good case for himself with his witty remarks and uncanny valley-esque awkward winking. A red herring almost leads us to believe the film will take the corny sci-fi route: something like an evil sentient computer coming to life to cause mayhem. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been so prevalent had “Allen” not behaved like a digital mimicking of a real human’s movements, rather than simply a computer generated avatar. Since there is no such reveal of a real person being behind the avatar, this can only be concluded as a flaw in filmmaking. 

Motwane’s absolute dedication to the screenlife style is admirable; the film refuses to show a single 3rd person perspective until 82 minutes in, at the beginning of the final arc. Even the live view of a photoshoot synced up to a computer screen is shown instead of just the filmed scene: yet another creative method amongst many used to continue the narrative in-screen, bar just a simple computer desktop. It also forces us to be contained within the digital world for almost its entirety; like Nella, whose troubles take place entirely on the internet. It’s one of the best of its kind so far to remind us: digital fears are the Satanic panic of the modern day. 

The film’s stylistic editing plays into the digital theme very neatly. The subplot of Nella’s erasing her ex from hundreds of thousands of pictures becomes the spinal cord of the narrative: as each smiling mug disappears a dozen or so square pixels at a time, reality follows suit – though just as digitally dominated. 

Just as how the film’s score goes from folk, to an unsettling orchestra with cyber hints, back to a more primitive sound by the end, CTRL perfectly illustrates the comically weak structure of internet users’ bandwagon opinions, who switch fast from love to hate, then to love again. It had a pretty solid take on one of the hardest niche genres to do right – mostly because of how unbearably on the nose messages tend to be. Luckily, audiences won’t feel cheated by the end of CTRL – the conclusion is as earnt as it possibly can be. 

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Written by Maddie Armstrong

Featured image courtesy of Netflix India

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