Stephen
Gomathi Shankar
Stephen
Overview
A psychiatrist evaluating a self-confessed serial killer unravels a twisted web of trauma, deceit, and psychological manipulation—only to question if the killer is truly guilty or just another victim in a larger, darker game.
Cast
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Wheel That Never Stops Spinning
The modern crime thriller often suffers from a mechanical obsession with procedure. We are usually asked to care about fingerprints, timelines, and the inevitable chase, reducing the antagonist to a puzzle piece waiting to be fitted. But in his directorial debut *Stephen*, filmmaker Mithun attempts to invert this formula, presenting us not with a "whodunit," but a claustrophobic "whydunit." By opening with the confession rather than the capture, the film immediately signals its intent to bypass the chase in favor of the psyche. It is a bold, if somewhat uneven, gamble—a film that asks us to sit in a room with a monster and decide if he is a tragic figure or a masterful architect of his own myth.
Mithun’s visual language is defined by a suffocating intimacy. Much of the film’s runtime is confined to the sterile, fluorescent-lit interrogation room, a setting that forces the audience into the uncomfortable position of a voyeur. The camera lingers on micro-expressions, trapping us between the erratic vulnerability of the self-confessed killer, Stephen (Gomathi Shankar), and the clinical skepticism of the psychiatrist, Seema (Smruthi Venkat). This confinement is punctuated by the recurring visual motif of a giant wheel—a carnival attraction that spins with dizzying, nauseating inevitability. It serves as a potent metaphor for the film’s central thesis on trauma: once the cycle of abuse begins, momentum takes over, and the passenger loses the ability to get off.
At the narrative’s hollow center is Gomathi Shankar’s performance, which anchors the film even when the script threatens to capsize under its own ambition. Shankar avoids the histrionics typical of cinematic psychopaths. There is no cackling, no exaggerated manic episodes. Instead, he plays Stephen with a terrifying, polite stillness. He speaks of butchery with the casual demeanor of someone ordering coffee. This dissonance creates a friction that is far more unsettling than any jump scare. He forces us to question the nature of the "monster"—is he a product of the horrific parental abuse detailed in the flashbacks, or is he using that trauma as a shield to hide a deeper, inexplicable darkness?
However, the film’s dedication to psychological realism occasionally clashes with its desire to be a clever genre exercise. In its final act, *Stephen* seems to lose faith in the quiet horror it has built, opting instead for a cascade of twists that feel designed to outsmart the audience rather than deepen the tragedy. The narrative structure, which moves backward from the confession to the root cause, is effective until it begins to feel like a sleight of hand. By the time the final revelations arrive, the emotional gravity of the abuse storyline risks being diluted by the mechanics of the plot twists.
Ultimately, *Stephen* is a film of promising, jagged edges. It is a work that understands that the scariest thing about a serial killer is not the violence they commit, but the silence that follows. While it may trip over its own narrative laces in a dash for a shocking conclusion, it succeeds in creating a portrait of a broken mind that is difficult to shake. It reminds us that trauma is not a straight line, but a spinning wheel—and sometimes, the only way to survive is to convince yourself you’re controlling the ride.
The modern crime thriller often suffers from a mechanical obsession with procedure. We are usually asked to care about fingerprints, timelines, and the inevitable chase, reducing the antagonist to a puzzle piece waiting to be fitted. But in his directorial debut *Stephen*, filmmaker Mithun attempts to invert this formula, presenting us not with a "whodunit," but a claustrophobic "whydunit." By opening with the confession rather than the capture, the film immediately signals its intent to bypass the chase in favor of the psyche. It is a bold, if somewhat uneven, gamble—a film that asks us to sit in a room with a monster and decide if he is a tragic figure or a masterful architect of his own myth.
Mithun’s visual language is defined by a suffocating intimacy. Much of the film’s runtime is confined to the sterile, fluorescent-lit interrogation room, a setting that forces the audience into the uncomfortable position of a voyeur. The camera lingers on micro-expressions, trapping us between the erratic vulnerability of the self-confessed killer, Stephen (Gomathi Shankar), and the clinical skepticism of the psychiatrist, Seema (Smruthi Venkat). This confinement is punctuated by the recurring visual motif of a giant wheel—a carnival attraction that spins with dizzying, nauseating inevitability. It serves as a potent metaphor for the film’s central thesis on trauma: once the cycle of abuse begins, momentum takes over, and the passenger loses the ability to get off.
At the narrative’s hollow center is Gomathi Shankar’s performance, which anchors the film even when the script threatens to capsize under its own ambition. Shankar avoids the histrionics typical of cinematic psychopaths. There is no cackling, no exaggerated manic episodes. Instead, he plays Stephen with a terrifying, polite stillness. He speaks of butchery with the casual demeanor of someone ordering coffee. This dissonance creates a friction that is far more unsettling than any jump scare. He forces us to question the nature of the "monster"—is he a product of the horrific parental abuse detailed in the flashbacks, or is he using that trauma as a shield to hide a deeper, inexplicable darkness?
However, the film’s dedication to psychological realism occasionally clashes with its desire to be a clever genre exercise. In its final act, *Stephen* seems to lose faith in the quiet horror it has built, opting instead for a cascade of twists that feel designed to outsmart the audience rather than deepen the tragedy. The narrative structure, which moves backward from the confession to the root cause, is effective until it begins to feel like a sleight of hand. By the time the final revelations arrive, the emotional gravity of the abuse storyline risks being diluted by the mechanics of the plot twists.
Ultimately, *Stephen* is a film of promising, jagged edges. It is a work that understands that the scariest thing about a serial killer is not the violence they commit, but the silence that follows. While it may trip over its own narrative laces in a dash for a shocking conclusion, it succeeds in creating a portrait of a broken mind that is difficult to shake. It reminds us that trauma is not a straight line, but a spinning wheel—and sometimes, the only way to survive is to convince yourself you’re controlling the ride.