Highway Is Derivative And Deals Only In Cliches

Director: KV Guhan

Writers: KV Guhan, Mirchi Kiran (dialogue), Sai Kiran (dialogue)

Cast: Abhishek Banerjee, Anand Deverakonda, Saiyami Kher

Highway feels like the kind of a thriller that might have felt intelligent if someone was watching a thriller for the first time in their life. But even a basic knowledge of thrillers or stories in the genre might prove too costly and come in the way of enjoying Highway to its fullest extent. 

Highway tells the story of a serial killer (Abhishek Banerjee) on the loose, with cop Asha Bharath (Saiyami Kher) on his tail. Meanwhile, Vishnu (Anand Devarakonda) is on a mission to save Thulasi (Manasa Radhakrishnan). And who is Thulasi you ask? She’s running away from her home because someone molested her in the middle of the night and now she’s going to Mangalore looking for her father. Over the course of their journey on the road, Vishnu falls in love with Thulasi.

These two stories collide on the titular highway when Thulasi falls into the hands of the serial killer.

This film uses violence against women as a way to capture the audience’s attention and guilt them into sympathising with the protagonists and hating the antagonist. The idea of a highway being full of predatory men seems like a decent one. But as you progress into the film, you realise the film relies on graphic depiction of violence and the voyeuristic gaze of its serial killer to an uncomfortable extent. We get it. He’s a serial killer. The unimaginative blaring music and the kitschy dialogue make all of that obvious. Do we need to see close-ins of the exact body parts that he sees? Do we need to see him slash a body, all the mutilations and the swings of the blade?

The film also goes to extraordinarily unnecessary lengths to show that Thulasi is innocent and sweet. She doesn’t know how to use a phone, she doesn’t know how to travel by herself, and at some point, she literally holds up a lamb while the serial killer looks at her. She even saves the serial killer from drowning and calls him Anna (elder brother). We get it. I understood that she is innocent. Thulasi is too sweet to understand she’s in trouble. She’s naïve. You see how I repeated the same idea thrice and it got irritating? Now imagine that in a film. 

But other than its gaze, structurally, the problem lies with its lead protagonist Vishnu. Anand Devarakonda is already stuck with a character with the least amount of stake in the story, but he seems even more awkward playing a “hero” type role where he has a sidekick (Satya). What has worked in Anand Devarakonda’s favour is that he has been the butt of all the jokes in his films, but here, he’s clueless being the “cool” guy. Worse, Vishnu falls in love during the course of the thriller,  so we get to see Thulasi (remember she’s running away from men who have tried to molest her) and Vishnu engage in a duet. It feels unnecessary and jarring, but it also terribly wrong for him to imagine her like this.

This film need not look as far as Silence of the Lambs, Zodiac, or Seven. Just look at Raman Raghav 2.0 in Hindi cinema, Rastasan in Tamil cinema, and Anasuya which I still consider to be the finest thriller, particularly in the serial killer space in Telugu cinema. All these films use violence against women to serve up thrillers, but at least its characters feel real and the stakes feel high. Here, Anand Devarakonda feels more redundant than some of the dialogues that Saiyami Kher has to say. Do we need a cop to say “We finally got the bastard” right after catching the serial killer? Maybe the idea was to make a drinking game every time she talks to herself while figuring out clues or says the word “bastard”. Because you know tough cops do that. Can’t we have women cops who have a wicked sense of humor? Do we need them to be so dull?

I’m not sure what compelled KV Guhan to tell this particular story in this manner. I think the actors got fine pay cheques, so I get their motives. But KV Guhan’s motives to tell this story remain a more interesting mystery than the serial killer’s motives in this film.