Marumugam

Synopsis: Mayan murders women who repulse him, all the while seeking a homely girl to marry. He finds her in Radhika but when she learns about his dark secret, he decides to kill her as well.

Movie Review: The psycho killer plot has been done to death (pun unintended) in Tamil cinema and this film tries to build upon the image of Daniel Balaji, who is known for playing deviant characters. The plot is a variation of what has already been done years earlier, in films like Sigappu Rojakkal, Nooravathu Naal and Oomai Vizhigal — a misogynist young man with a past murders women, all the while seeking a homely girl to marry. But when she learns about his dark secret, he has to kill her as well.

Here, Mayan (Daniel Balaji), a clay modeling artist, murders women who are sexually attracted to him and disposes their body by using it to model his creations. He tries to marry the homely (he thinks so) Radhika (Preeti Das), who, actually, has a careerist boyfriend in Ram (Anoop). Mayan gets engaged to Radhika but learns of her love affair and takes her with him to Kodaikanal without anyone’s knowledge. When the girl comes to know of his real character, she tries to flee but is it too late?

Marumugam essentially deals with the Freudian Madonna-whore complex but it is least interested in exploring this angle and tries to keep everything at the surface level. This isn’t wrong, as it could still have made for a solid thriller but the banal script with lethargic characterizations, corny lines, wooden acting (even Daniel Balaji, who can ham pretty well, is bland) and flat staging don’t even indicate B-grade TV serial quality. The only appreciable thing here is the title credits sequence, which captures the vibe of lurid pulp thrillers, something that the film tragically fails to realize.