Game Over is a 2019 Indian psychological horror film directed by Ashwin Saravanan. Produced by YNOT Studios and Reliance Entertainment, the film stars Taapsee Pannu as a woman with PTSD who is defending her home from mysterious intruders. The film was shot simultaneously in Tamil and Telugu. The film was also dubbed in Hindi and was presented by Anurag Kashyap. The dialogues were written by Ashwin Saravanan and Kaavya Ramkumar in Tamil and Venkat Kacharla in Telugu. The music is composed by Ron Ethan Yohann.

Principal photography commenced on 10 October 2018. The film was released on 14 June 2019 to mostly positive reviews.

Plot

The film starts with a serial killer (whose face is not revealed) stalking and video recording a girl from outside her house and later at midnight suffocating her by wrapping her head in plastic and tying her hands behind her. He then drags her to an abandoned football field where he beheads her and sets her body on fire.

Later, the film focuses on Swapna, a single young woman and a talented game designer. She has a fear of darkness, and also has post-traumatic stress more so known as 'anniversary reaction', a condition which triggers unsettling feelings around the anniversary of a traumatic event. For Swapna, it is the horrific memory of her being raped that happened on last New Year's Eve.

Her family has a traditional mindset that decent girls should not have tattoos or go out at night; to which she did not listen, and was later raped. Instead of comforting her afterwards, they kept blaming the tragedy on her and not listening to them. Because of this, she left her parents, never contacted them since, and leads a secluded life with Kalamma, her housemaid who stays with her. Her only solace is her love for gaming.

The new year is around the corner and Swapna suffers from PTSD a second time since last year after she has to enter a dark room, even with Kalamma being there with her. She also feels a stinging pain in the tattoo area on her wrist from time to time. As the tattoo was a year old, the pain persisting even now was explained to be technically impossible by the doctor, but Swapna feels there to be a connection between the tattoo (of a game life) and her miserable memory.

Trying to find some relevant answers, she meets the tattoo artist whom she knows well, and asks her about it. She reveals that she mistakenly made her tattoo with an ink mixed with a stranger's ashes, but later tried to contact her to inform her about the mistake but was never able to properly get in touch with her. The artist tries to apologise but Swapna angrily storms off, and later that day books an appointment for laser removal of her tattoo, but she is not able to go through with it as the tattoo keeps stinging.

Later she goes to a nearby cafe to grab a coffee, but finds two men watching the video of her being raped. As she realises that the video has gone viral, she rushes out and later at the hospital, she is told by Kalamma that her parents are coming to talk to her about the video. She immediately walks to the balcony and jumps off, but is saved, although her legs are broken, and is now on a wheelchair. Weeks later, on New Year's eve, a woman arrives with the tattoo artist at her home, and tells Swapna about her daughter Amutha, a cancer survivor, who became an unfortunate victim of a serial killer. In her memory, she got the tattoo that Amutha wanted her to have, with the ink mixed with her ashes, which was accidentally used by the tattoo artist to make Swapna's tattoo. Amutha's mother encourages Swapna and says that her daughter will want her to fight and will always be there with her.

Later that day, Swapna cancels her second tattoo removal appointment. Beginning to accept her past and feeling optimistic, she asks Kalamma for them to go meet her parents the next day (to which she had been deliberately putting off for the past few months), to Kalamma's glad surprise.

Meanwhile, the same serial killer that killed many young women in the city, including Amutha, finally targets Swapna. At night, he kills off the security guard and then Kalamma. Before he kills Swapna, she is shocked to see not one but three tattoos on her wrist.

Swapna wakes up from the nightmare and immediately switches on the light, only to find that there are still two tattoos left on her wrist. Wanting to make sure it was all just a dream, she looks out the window with Kalamma to spot the security guard, but they are horrified to see his headless body on the ground. Fearing the same events about to happen, she calls the police ahead of time and waits for them with Kalamma inside her room, but they are forced to leave when someone sets the room on fire from outside her window. In the living room they spot the killer waiting for them. He kills Kalamma but two police officers who had just arrived, are able to spot the killer from outside the window and shoot him. Swapna seems to have been saved, and is taken to the police station by one of the police officers while the other stays behind and calls for backup. As the vehicle is driving off, it explodes by a bomb attached to it by the killer. It is now revealed that there were not one but three killers, who had already beheaded the other police officer back at her house.

Swapna awakes with her last life remaining. She struggles for a bit but this time does not switch on the light to draw the killers' attention, finally overcoming her fear of darkness in the process, while the killers, who had just beheaded the security guard, take their positions, one outside the main door, one outside her room window and one on the terrace. She and Kalamma first call the police and then manage to burn the killer outside her room window to death, just as the police arrive. The killer on the terrace pushes Kalamma down the stairs, severely injuring her, while the two police officers are killed by the killer outside the main door. Now in the living room, the killer targets Swapna, who had come to Kalamma's help lying on the bottom of the stairs, but Swapna manages to kill him too by hitting him on the head multiple times with the footrest of her wheelchair. The third killer on the terrace now comes down and Swapna quickly crawls to her room but the killer enters after her and shuts the door behind. He records Swapna with the video camera while holding a machete to her neck, but Swapna is able to stab him in the neck with a broken piece of glass. Finally, with all the killers dead and Kalamma still alive, Swapna is overwhelmed with emotions as the fireworks are set off in the sky for a new year.

Cast 
 Taapsee Pannu as Swapna
 Vinodhini Vaidyanathan as Kalamma, home maid of Swapna
 Anish Kuruvilla as Psychiatrist
 Sanchana Natarajan as Amutha (in Tamil) / Amritha (in Telugu)
 Ramya Subramanian as Varsha
 Parvathi T. as Dr. Reena, Amutha's mother (in Tamil) / Amritha's mother (in Telugu)
 David Solomon Raja as Inspector
 Indrajith as Constable
 Krishna Raj as Coffee shop guy
 Subramanian as Anwar, watchman

Production 
The film marks the return of actress Taapsee Pannu to Tamil cinema after a hiatus of four years. The first look poster of the film was unveiled on 10 October 2018, which displayed Taapsee sitting in a wheelchair with legs in plaster casts. The shooting of the film commenced on the very next day on 11 October 2018. Pannu went under intense training playing a person who uses a wheelchair. The shooting of the film was wrapped up on 14 December 2018.

Soundtrack 

The official film score is composed by Ron Ethan Yohann who had worked with Ashwin Saravanan in Maya and Iravaakaalam. The music rights were secured by the production company's subsidiary music label YNOT Music, with Divo as their digital partner. The official soundtrack album was released by Santhosh Narayanan on 24 August 2019. The album features 28 songs which lasts for 67 minutes.

Marketing and release 
The official teaser of the movie was released on 15 May 2019. The trailer of the film was released by Dhanush, Rana Daggubati and Taapsee Pannu in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi on 30 May 2019. The film was released in all three versions on 14 June 2019.

Home media
The Tamil, Telugu and Hindi versions of the film became available as VOD on Netflix in late 2019.

Reception

Critical response 
, the film holds  approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on  reviews with an average rating of .

Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in praises Pannu and Vaidyanathan for their 'doughty performance' and opines that the writers have delivered a taut and highly watchable thriller. Summing up she says, "[The film] is a taut thriller about demons within and without". Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost gave three and half stars out of five and feels that the film is an inventive, intelligent and terrifying film that doesn't take the viewer lightly. Praising the performance of Taapsee Pannu and direction of Ashwin Saravanan, Anna says, "Game Over is as crisp and to-the-point as a thriller can get." Priyanka Sinha Jha  of News18 rates it with three and half stars out of five, stating the film with its paranormal-meets-noir is a good example where Indian concepts are combined with western. She concludes, that the Hindi version of the film is worth a watch for entertainment and its new-age cinematic virtues. Writing for NDTV Saibal Chatterjee terming screenplay "smart and minimalist", praises the director for his deft handling of the execution and Pannu for her characterisation of the role. He  concludes the review as, "While she [Pannu] may be the primary reason why you must go out and watch this film, it certainly isn't devoid of other intrinsic merits in terms of substance and execution." He rates it with three stars out of five. Raja Sen writing a mixed review for Hindustan Times rated the film with two and half stars out of five and finds, 'Pannu strong in a hysterically distraught role' and Vinodhini Vaidyanathan 'wonderfully warm'. He thinks that the film, inspired from Black Mirror has a solid concept. But, he says, "[it] devolves into a witless muddle in the final act." Baradwaj Rangan of Film Companion South wrote "In short, Game Over is a tight genre-hopping thriller that keeps you guessing about the genre it can be slotted into...The small miracle of the film is that it manages to pack all of this—and a lot more—into 100-something minutes".
 
Negative reviews such as those by Rajeev Masand writing for News18, praise Pannu for her performance but states that, "barring its leading lady's impressive performance, it's simply hit and miss." He rates the film with two and half stars out of five. Shubhra Gupta writing for The Indian Express gives one and half star out of five and finds "writing flabby" and "key sequences repetitive". She says, "There are a couple of genuinely scary moments, but the rest of it is too stretched: even the 102 minute run time feels too long, with not enough thrills or chills."

Box office
Game Over worldwide theatrical gross was .

Awards and nominations

See also
 List of films featuring time loops

References

External links 
 
 

2010s Tamil-language films
Indian thriller films
Tamil-language psychological thriller films
Films shot in Chennai
Reliance Entertainment films
Films about disability in India
2019 psychological thriller films
Indian multilingual films
2019 multilingual films
2010s Telugu-language films