V1 (film)

The movie starts with an interesting note, a girl being followed and murdered in a deserted street and the forensic expert looks like hallucinating about a murder while he is undergoing therapy with his psychiatrist. There is a different story and mystery surrounding the forensic expert Agni (Ram Arun Castro) being treated for his condition nyctophobia which is a special condition about the person fearing darkness. When his friend Luna (Vishnupriya Pillai) from the same department convinces him to take up the case of the recently murdered girl who happens to be Narmadha (Gayathri), the duo start interrogating the victim’s boyfriend Inba (Lijeesh). Though Inba clearly accepts about some minor misunderstanding between the two despite being in a live-in relationship for about six months, Agni is convinced that there is someone else involved in the crime. There are multiple interrogations with the victim’s friend and a roadside Romeo who was in touch with her just before the murder. At that point in time, depressed Inba is found dead at his residence with a suicide note. The investigations start around the residential area where the murder took place and the team is able to identify another person as a suspect who starts running away from them.

A small flashback is shown depicting the reason for Agni's nyctophobia. Agni was living a happy life with his wife Blessie who was conceived. One day, Agni finds Blessie dead near the staircase and finds a suspect outside his house. Agni chases him but the suspect meets with an accident and passes away. To Agni's shock, it is revealed that while Blessie was climbing down the staircase holding Agni's gun, she accidentally got slipped and fell down. She also unknowingly triggered the gun leading to her death. Agni initially suspected an ice cream seller who saw the incident, became frightened, and ran away as Agni started chasing him. Now Agni understands that Blessie's death was an accident and his wrong intuition led to the death of an innocent ice cream seller. This guilt affects Agni and he suffers from nyctophobia. Agni adopts the ice cream seller's only daughter Sam and puts her in an orphanage.

Coming to present, Agni's problem of nyctophobia is revealed to his higher officer and he makes Agni resign his job as he is unfit due to this. However, Agni vows to find the culprit in the next couple of days before resigning. After many rounds of interrogations, Agni sets his eyes on the Narmadha's father. He finds that it was Narmadha's father who actually killed her by stabbing her neck with a pen as her father is more inclined towards caste and he hated his daughter's relationship with another caste guy. Her father gets arrested.

• Ram Arun Castro as Agni
• Vishnupriya Pillai as Luna
• Gayathri as Narmadha
• Lijeesh as Inba
• Mime Gopi
• Linga
• Ramachandran Durairaj
• Eashvar Karthic

Pavel Navageethan's script, who was struggling to find a financier, was able to get a producer after the editor of the film, Prem Kumar, told the story to a hundred producers. After getting a producer Ram Arun Castro and Malayalam actress Vishnupriya Pillai were roped in to play the lead roles.[2]

The film released to mixed reviews from critics. The Times of India gave the film two out of five stars praising the lack of songs, performances of Castro and Vishnupriya, and the engaging first half, but criticized the second half of the film as it lacked the important elements of a thriller.[3] Sify praised the intriguing beginning of the film, but criticized the screenplay and forced climax twist.[4] The Hindu praised the scene where each character tells the same scene in different ways, but criticized the screenplay and the unreliability of certain scenes.[5] Deccan Chronicle said that the film is "enjoyable in parts" and criticized the film's climax and the murderer's reason for killing. On the other hand, the Deccan Chronicle praised the performances of Castro and Vishnupriya, the screenplay, and the cinematography.[6] Indian Express wrote "Though the reason in V1 does have its shock value, it suffers from miserable staging".[7] Silverscreen wrote "Debutant Pavel’s bullet strikes but loses its momentum half-way through while attempting to justify the genre".[8]

• V1 at IMDb