Exclusive! Vysakh: Night Drive is a thriller that very much fits into my kind of films made for entertainment

In the past decade, director Vysakh’s name has been synonymous with ‘mass’ movies in Malayalam. His upcoming film Night Drive, starring Anna Ben, Roshan Mathew and Indrajith Sukumaran, though is different from the previous big budget films with superstars that he has often worked in.

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay ahead of the film’s theatrical release on March 11, the Pulimurugan director tells us what prompted him to take up Night Drive, scripted by Abhilash Pillai, and why it was a different experience for him.

“First off, I’d like to clarify that Night Drive isn’t a purely realistic film; it still fits into my kind of films that are made for entertainment. It’s not like I have changed my pattern completely,” says Vysakh. “Obviously, there is a difference in terms of the scale, compared with films I have done with big stars.”

The director says that Night Drive was made comparatively on a smaller scale, primarily because that’s what its subject demanded. “The events in the plot happen over a night,” says Vysakh. “That comes with its set of limitations, as in how do you pack the entertainment elements and what are the incidents that you can align in the story. But Abhilash’s script had all of those aspects covered in the sense that it had events that usually happen over a period of years, ensuing in a span of just a few hours, and that’s what piqued my interest too.”

Another reason the Madhuraraja filmmaker took up the film was that it gave him a chance to do something new while adhering to his core belief of making a commercial film. “I am someone who does films to entertain the family audience, and I was sure this screenplay fit that bill. Also, it gave me an opportunity to do something different from what I usually do,” he concludes.

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