Game Over (2019)/Ashwin Saravanan

 Just finished this Indian melodrama/slasher shot in both Hindu and Tamil. Emotionally potent and riveting thanks to the superb work from Taapsee Pannu, offering up one hell of a performance. It's such a part, one of which I feel so many an actress would love to land because it features this incredibly resilient young woman, overcoming a rape, fear of the dark, multiple serial killers in black skull mask and leather suits -- a supernatural component of tattoos and creatively including a video game "three hearts" as a form of the feline nine lives set up three chances for Pannu to learn from mistakes and how the killers orchestrate their murders and violence -- and disapproving traditional parents who fail to support her, ignorantly blaming and shaming her for going out on New Year's and getting a tattoo describing her love for gaming. This is a character who hyperventilates when in a dark room, dreading the end of the year, recalling how that rape and abuse felt over and over. She even learns that some ash of a murdered cancer survivor was used in tattoo ink for her tattoo. Added supernatural component of the tattoo hurting when she tries to cut herself there or remove it, as if the spirit of that girl reaches out to stop her, is another creative move that stands this out from many slasher films it might otherwise be compared to. The trauma, difficulty adapting, self-imposed isolation, withdrawal from everyone except her psychiatrist, security, and friend/maid/confidante, Kalamma (Vinodhini Vaidyanathan) provide Pannu with such gristle and meat for her character. Kalamma is her support system, a patient, kind, caring, affectionate caregiver and even mother hen, staying on her to get out more, see her parents, challenge herself to battle the dark, and, ultimately, help her vanquish the killers as they take advantage of the element of surprise and numbers. While I think the killers were too comfortable, lackadaisical, just bullshitting and taking too much time, allowing their prey to fight back and subvert the murder plot. But that still doesn't take away from Pannu's performance, a very potent dramatic arc involving the mother visiting Pannu about the loss of her daughter and the importance of accepting the tattoo with a small part of said daughter, and the emotional and physical fight Pannu's character endures (and takes hold of). 4/5

In a wheelchair, Pannu has yet another difficulty to overcome. The supernatural devices included does allow her to get a second and third chance and the home security system being ineffective does give the killers further advantage. So the three killers opposing Pannu with three life hearts "evens the odds". Grisly decapitations, including a wicked POV from Pannu as she is beheaded, and burned bodies, with some stabbings, up the slasher potency and shock factor.