Grey review: A shoddy film that insults the audience's intelligence

Filmmaker Abhishek Jawkar's Grey, an official remake of Jeethu Joseph's Oozham (2016), is a terrible film that insults the audience's intelligence. What makes it worse is that it is evident that the filmmaker truly believed that he had made a good film.

There are generally two kinds of bad films: those that are so incompetently made that they're funny and those that are so awful that they bore you to death. Grey falls in the second category.

It's a simple story of revenge. Siddhant (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi), a controlled explosion expert, has returned from the US to Nashik to attend his sister Aishwarya's ( Mayuri Deshmukh) engagement.

Siddhant's father Dharmadhikari (Avinash Narkar) is in the construction business and his adopted brother and neighbour Arbaaz (Pushkaraj Chirputkar) is an aspiring ethical hacker. Immediately after Siddhant returns to the US, tragedy strikes. He sees his entire family getting killed on a video call. The murders were ordered by a major politician Anmol Patil (Sharad Ponkshe).

Siddhant vows to take revenge on Patil and his men and enlists the help of his girlfriend Gayatri (Pallavi Patil) and Arbaaz. The rest of the film is about how Siddhant tricks Patil's men and takes his revenge.

Grey has no redeeming qualities. The film is filled with cringe-inducing moments that make you wonder how any filmmaker could consider his audience to be so dumb.

Our hero does most of the risky stuff, such as breaking into someone's home, whereas Arbaaz handles the hacking part. One never knows what Gayatri actually does apart from just accompanying these two. The screenplay and direction by Jawkar are so embarrassingly amateurish that after a point the film becomes unbearable. There are numerous illogical instances that could have been easily handled in a better way. In one of many such scenes, our hero who has just killed a police officer by breaking into his house escapes cops on patrol duty by jumping onto the hood of a car from the first floor. Mind you, the cops are just 20-30 feet away but they don't hear a thing because they were looking in another direction.

The dreadful direction spoils even the rare moments that had the potential to create at least some kind of thrills, like the scene where Siddhant enters Patil's office by disguising himself as an internet service provider. The less said about the film's technical aspects such as production design, music and cinematography the better as they are equally horrendous. 

The dialogues by Spruha Joshi are also unintentionally funny and absurd and everyone's acting leaves a lot to be desired. Tatwavadi tries to uplift the film with his sincere performance but he also fails miserably. The supporting cast, which comprises some well-known Marathi actors, has also done a dreadful job. 

Generally, this reviewer does not like to mention so many potential spoilers in the review, but this is such an awful film that he does not want anyone to waste two hours of their life viewing it.

Grey is being streamed on Zee5.