Iruttu

Iruttu
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	V. Z. Durai
Written by	V. Z. Durai Indra Soundar Rajan (dialogues)
Screenplay by	V. Z. Durai
Story by	V. Z. Durai
Produced by	Sundar Arumugam Parthasarathi Gokulyadav
Starring	Sundar C. Sakshi Choudhary Dhansika VTV Ganesh
Cinematography	E. Krishnasamy
Edited by	R. Sudharsan
Music by	Girishh G.
Production company	Screen Scene Media Entertainment
Distributed by	Lyca Productions
Release date	6 December 2019 (2019-12-06) (India)
Running time	132 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹7 crore
Box office	₹21 crore

Iruttu (transl. Dark) is a 2019 Indian supernatural horror thriller film written and directed by V. Z. Durai. It stars Sundar C., Sakshi Choudhary and VTV Ganesh in the lead roles. While Vimala Raman, Dhanshika, Yogi Babu, and Manasvi Kottachi play supporting roles. The music for the film was composed by Girishh G. while cinematography was handled by E. Krishnasamy.^[1] The film had its theatrical release on 6 December 2019 and opened to generally mixed to positive reviews.^[2][3] It was later dubbed in Hindi and released under the title Qatil Saya..

Plot[]

The film opens in Hillstation Sigapurahali during noon at 12:00 clock. A man is seen cutting long grass and two other man run to check out a large python and states that it has to be killed, another man encounters a large termite infestation. A black figure is seen walking and suddenly the whole hill goes DARK right in the mid of the day. The whole village is ominous, the first man tries to burn off the termites while two men watch and discuss the arrival of the dark. All four of them are gruesomely murdered in the Hills by an unseen force. Police arrive at the spot for investigation,the Officer Palraj is admonished by his higher official and then he proceeds to explain the baffling situation where there is no fingerprint or any other traces on the murder spot. All victims neck bones have been shattered but there are no signs of a handprint or a murder weapon, near tall grass, at a cemetery, a hut, under the bridge, and near a pond, all five victims are murdered within half a kilometre from each other q but the forensic report states the time of the murder of them to be exactly the same and no vehicle marks were found. Palraj continues to investigate and seems to find a clue. He requests Constable Kulandaisamy to hurry to SP Office to discuss further. Constable Kulandaisamy hurries to SP Office where he finds a woman trying to immolate herself as her husband has eloped and planning to get married the same day. Kulandaisam and the female constables convince the woman calming her down and removing the kerosene from her, right at the moment Palraj reached the office entrance and stops to look at the weird fish outside his office entrance. As ominous chanting and whispers sound are heard, he seemingly gets hypnotized by the eyes of the fish and ends up immolating himself, vain attempts of saving him fails and at the end, his charred body lets out a other worldly howl scaring everyone around him.

Chezhiyan (Sundar C.), a newly appointed police officer, along with his wife Regina (Sakshi Choudhary) and daughter Diya (Manasvi Kottachi) relocate to the hill station and on the way the family decides for a picnic as the scenic beauty is good but a dead crow falls, their pet dog Danny runs off into the forest and scares his wife Regina and daughter Diya. Chezhiyan manages to find Danny but Regina feels this to be a bad omen for a new start. Once they leave the place, the dead crow wakes up and flies away.

Chezhiyan and his family encounter bizarre events right from the first day. Constable Kulandaisamy helps the family to settle down in a rented house. Chezhiyan notes that all the windows and furniture are all made of steel. Kulandaisamy states that no one had wooden items in the hill station as all are destroyed by Termites. Diya checks out the new house and enters a room where object are covered with cloth. Curious she pulls of the cloth of an object revealing it to be a big mirror. While checking the reflection, Diya feels that one of the other object covered in cloth to be moving . Scared she proceeds to remove it, revealing it to be a mannequin. Just then Regina comes in search of Diya and takes her with her, as Regina starts preparing a meal she hears annoying tapping noise and scolds Diya to stop making it. As the noise continues she goes on to check only to find noise came from the window. She Proceeds to check the windows, on opening it hundreds of crows crowd their window scaring them both. During dinner, Regina shares her fear that the house might be haunted to which Cheziyan makes fun of her for being scared and states he is given a tough case to solve and if he is successful it would help him get promoted.

Constable Kulandaisamy returns to the Police station and encounters a weird phone call where a woman cries for help and calls his name but does not state her place, he is extremely scared when he gets to know that the phone had been out of order for the past two days. While at the station, he discusses the same with his other colleagues, the entire station experiences complete power shut down and the out of order phones starts ringing again and scaring everyone senseless, right at the moment they all notice a shady face of a woman in the windows and screams.

Panicked, they makes a call to Chezhiyan begging him to come and rescue them. Meanwhile, Chezhiyan and Regina who were trying to be intimate are both startled to see a scary old man in rags standing right outside their window. While trying to enquire the old man doesn't talk, One of his constables arrives and states that the Old man is harmless and mentally unwell. Chezhiyan warns the old man to stay away and gets back with his wife when he gets Kulandaisamy's call for help. He reluctantly leaves for the station to check his colleagues in distress. In the absence of him, his wife Regina is very disturbed by the unusual things happening at the house. The music system randomly starts playing music and scaring her. She unplugs it and turn around only to have it plugged back and play music again, stressed she tries to sleep only to find her daughter standing deranged at the end of the bed, jumping on her and biting off her neck. She wakes up screaming to realize it was a dream and checks up on her daughter who is sleeping peacefully.

Chezhiyan manages to calm down his colleagues and reaches out to the Telephone department to trace back the call. In the morning, he starts gathering information with the help of Kulandaisamy with regards to the gruesome murders that happened earlier. He gets to know that Hillstation has a peculiar name Sigarpurhali of Arabic origin, as it is believed to be an ancient settlement of Arabic People who used to practice magic. Kulandaisamy also states that an Arabic Magic Practitioner stays alone atop of the hill and he is often seen with the ragged old man. Chezhiyan wishes to meet him while Kulandaisamy warns him not to. The practitioner is seen to be praying and chanting vigorously but he leaves his home when Cheziyan comes to investigate. On his way home he notes the magician pouring some powder on road and he stops. Cheziyan chases the magician into the forest but he disappears. As he looks around a ghostly hand tries to reach out and grab him but retreats as he turns. Cheziyan returns home only to be surprisingly seduced by his wife. After being intimate with her he searches for his phone to find missed calls from Kulandai. When he calls back news reports stating a panic call to the station had come from his home's landline leaving him confused as he was home at the moment. Immediately he gets a call from his wife mobile. Puzzled he attends it only to understand that his wife left early from home to drop the kid at school and visit the supermarket. He is even more baffled as moments ago he had spent intimate time with his wife. He confirmes that the caller was his wife by making a video call. He visits the super market, cross-checks the CCTV and confirms that whoever was with him at home that morning wasn't his wife. He discusses his worries and speculations with Kulandai and then corners the magician outside his home. As he confronts the magician, the magician knowing that black woman has entered Cheziyan's home warns him that she is Sila and isn't of this world or human and the Magician needs to chant prayers 4440 times before the time of dawn to keep her at bay and warns Cheziyan to stay alive until then. Meanwhile, Regina gets to school to pick up Diya, while Diya walks, discussing school events with her, she realizes that she is alone and turns back only to look at Sila in black. As she tensley enquires about her mom, Sila bends down to lick the cheeks of terrified Diya. At the moment, the real Regina parks her car and goes in search of Diya. Once again the Hill plunges into darkness at early hours panicking them all, Cheziyan gets the help of his Muslim colleague and gets in touch with Muslim High Priest to know the prayer times. Hysterical Regina calls Cheziyan letting him know that Siya is petrified and has odd rashes in her body and demands he come to the hospital right then. Worried he reaches the hospital to find Regina in tears and Diya in pain. As the doctor treats her, He gets a call from home and attends it, only to hear the hysterical voice of his wife relating Diya's rashes, right when she is standing in front of him. He decides that he would retain Regina and Diya in hospital safely and investigate who is the imposter wife. But they accompany him home. While Regina puts Diya to bed and changes clothes, Sila can be seen lustily watching and roaming the house and sniffing off Cheziyan's scent. Cheziyan realizes Sila's presence by the movement of his leather jacket. Regina and Cheziyan proceed to eat dinner in silence when they hear Diya scream. As they rush to Diya's help they find Diya scooting to the corner of the room, not letting Cheziyan touch her. She points up the windows where the ragged looking old man is chanting prayers and seemingly spraying some water around the house and windows. Cheziyan pissed off beats the old man and throws him out. All the time Sila can be seen hanging on the windows sill.

The Old Man reports back to the Magician stating he managed to ward off Sila from the house and cannot get rid of her and it is up to the magician's prayers before dawn that can aim to control Sila. He starts to pray vigorously till dawn. But before he could complete prayer he hears the screams of the old man and comes out to check, only to find a completely demonized Sila dragging off the old man. His phone rings untimely bringing Sila's attention to him. She gives a demonic cry and starts pursuing the magician, he tries to scurry back to his house but could not get the door to budge open. When the Dawn Prayer time crosses, his home door burst opens and pulls him in. He is shocked to see another demon in white inside the house and she proceeds to kill him.

Later on that morning Cheziyan and other police get to the spot where the Magician is impaled on top of a tree and devoured by termites. Noting the signs of blood clot he deduces that the magician is murdered a few hours back, he requests the forensic team to collect every blood sample around the spot. Cheziyan while investigating the forensic photos comes across a weird thorn scratch in Magician body indication 16:113. Cheziyan notes down but couldn't conclude anything. Forensic Report comes back with two different blood samples from the murder spot. One being Magician's and the other being a rare blood group called "Bombay blood group" and only a very specific set of people in the parts of Gujrat and Maharashtra have this. Cheziyan proceeds to narrow down his suspect from the details of the list of people with this Rare Blood group. He narrows it down to a woman who has unusually signed in Arabic. He takes a printout of her photo and cross checks it with his daughter. A calm Diya turns completely hysterical the moment she sees the photo thus confirming that woman in the photo is none other than Sila. He sends Regina and Diya to another house and requests Kulandai to change the sheets of his bed with the same sheet that was present when he was intimate with Sila. The police dog is used to track the hideout of Sila inside the forest. Wondering what could be the link for an Arabic woman born in Maharashtra/Gujrat to be with a hill station in the south, He stumbles upon a verse of Quran 4:16. The striking similarity of the number with the one scratched on Dead magician has him check the Quran verses of 16:113.

Cast[]

• Sundar C. as Inspector Chezhiyan aka Chelli aka Sivabalan
• Sakshi Choudhary as Regina Chezhiyan
• Sai Dhanshika as Jinn Sila
• VTV Ganesh as Head Constable Kulandhaivel
• Vimala Raman as Jinn Shaika
• Manasvi Kottachi as Diya Chezhiyan; Chezhiyan's daughter
• Yogi Babu as House Broker Vanangamudi
• Shaji Chen as Muslim Sage
• Raja Simman as Mouliyaar

Production[]

The announcement of the film was made by director V. Z. Durai after the release of his directorial Yemaali in 2018. This film is the seventh directorial of Durai. The first look poster was released in October 2018 with a picture of Sundar C in the role of a cop.^[4] The director reportedly hired director turned actor Sundar C in the male lead role while he was busy with his directorial Vantha Rajavathaan Varuven.^[5] The shooting of the film progressed in Ooty.^[6]

Music[]

The soundtrack of the film is composed by Girishh G. of Aval fame, and lyrics by Mohanrajan. The audio rights are with Sony Music.^[7]

Reception[]

The film made a collection of 21 crores.Director V. Z. Durai is known for his unique film making styles and yet once again proved it.

Awards and Nominations[]

References[]

External links[]

• Iruttu at IMDb