CTRL (2024) Movie Review: A Screenlife Thriller That Finds Strength in Real Human Drama

“CTRL” is “Black Mirror” crossed with “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” That is the obligatory single-line take, which would be paraded around as an opinion of the movie rather than what it actually is—a pitch. I suppose with regards to how deep or volatile an exploration could be regarding social media usage as well as the proliferation of the internet within one’s life, it depends on which aspects of that idea screenwriters Motwane and Avinash Sampath would like to focus all their creative energies upon.

That decision alone would also entail casting the protagonist—Anaya Panday, who has now carved out a niche for herself due to the characters modeled around her personality, with a few degrees removed from herself. It could be criticized, except Panday is genuinely good at it. In an interview while promoting the film, Motwane would remark how the idea of casting Panday came after he watched her performance in the Shakun Batra directorial “Gehraiyaan” (2022), where Panday would play an early 20s-rich heiress mildly clueless about the world but emotionally cognizant just about enough to not devolve into a caricature. That role would devolve into a caricature in “Liger” but would be improved and given a greater dimension within the film “Kho Gayein Hum Kahaan” (2023).

In essence, Panday portrays the perpetually online and thus perpetually insecure character. She is insecure about the online portfolio (both personal and professional) that has been crafted by her influencer career that the character Nella would share with her boyfriend Joe (Vihaan Samat). Thus, when her relationship crashes and burns, and due to the inextricable nature of social media with her personal life and her influencer career as well, Nella (Anaya Panday) decides to order an AI app to erase all digital footprints of her ex-partner from social media. But granting that AI brings forth its share of troubles.

CTRL (2024) Movie Review — A still from “CTRL” (2024) streaming on Netflix

The word CTRL, abbreviating for control, is in itself also abbreviating and obfuscating the true master of Nella’s social life because while Nella believes the AI is under her control, the AI being the proprietary of a multi-national company, Mantra (clearly a thinly veiled dig at Meta), has its agenda, and being given permission and administrative control over one’s laptop affords it control over the intricacies of the software even the user of the laptop might be unaware of. This is a surefire plot to illuminate the perils of artificial intelligence and unsolicited data-sharing with large corporations in an era where information is currency. But this plot is also quite milquetoast.

Screenlife thrillers became popular due to the advent of the internet and social media, and the events shown here and the evocation of thrill and dread feel far too familiar. More importantly, the film’s plot, which inevitably leads to the AI taking control of her perpetually online social media avatar and tweaking it to suit its ends, comes a tad bit too late into the film.

The constituents of the plot of the film, with its independent crusader, perhaps led to an unfavorable end: lawyers (with endless capital) sounding almost cartoonishly menacing, and the CEO of the multinational company so eager to be depicted as evil that the camera focuses on his pupil while comments whisk about in the background—all render an air of disinterest. All because it boils down to a single point about being careful of how to share information with third-party apps, which would have worked better, perhaps as a 15-minute short film.

“CTRL” is decidedly more comfortable as a character study. It explores Nella’s character as one governed by betrayal and rage and thus prone emotionally to making decisions that would ultimately lead to consequences. The human moments she has with her ex-partner or with the few friends that we see her communicate with are moments written with great efficiency, masking poignancy. It manages to utilize Panday’s acting chops well.

There is also a notable filmmaking style in screenlife thrillers where even if the movie focuses on a master shot at the entire computer screen, it will ultimately zoom in to a high-resolution shot of one comment or towards the tail end of a messaging thread and hold in bated breath as we see the three dots that signify the person on the other end typing out one’s response.

It’s an effective but also slick method to ensure the viewer’s focus never wavers from what the film is trying to show. However, that filmmaking style ultimately foregoes the sheer busyness and chaos of a perpetually online system shared between a human being and his cell phone or a human being and his laptop. The chaos of shuttling between multiple tabs on a browser, moving from one app to the next with a one-time password or a decoded text, or posting a picture at the precise time to ensure one can ride the wave of the algorithm is strangely missing here. The closest the film comes to replicating that sensation is the sequence of Panday having to recover the password from her boyfriend’s email ID through multiple email apps.

The movie effectively captures the vibes of staying in the online world, replicating the TikTok aesthetic with the somewhat cartoonish and crayonish vibe or the brightly colored, glazing discotheque aesthetics. I also liked the different logos signifying the transition towards an overarching operating system. There is a level of detail in these moments that points towards the subtlety of world-building in this movie. The movie is, however, heavily poignant towards the end, when the urge for control becomes almost like a drug. The film should have explored the poignancy of that moment rather than the rote nature of the cautionary tale.