Ashwin Saravanan's 'Game Over' begins with a shot of a woman being killed in a gory way. Her head is sliced off, and her body is burnt. What is remarkable about this is the way it has been shot. The camera is not steady, the colours are unsaturated. The shots are composed in an irregular angle and there isn't any pattern as such. In short, it is real. That sets the tone for the rest of the film.

Swapna (played by Taapsee Pannu) is a videogame developer, and she is extremely suicidal. Memories of a scarring incident keep flashing in her mind and she's unable to overcome that. In addition to this, she is scared of darkness and has panic attacks often. She lives in an isolated house with Kala Amma, played by a more-than-terrific Vinodhini. She's more than terrific because she overshadows Taapsee's acting in certain scenes, and Taapsee is terrific throughout. Look out for the scene where she looks out of the window to search for the watchman. Her eyes grow a pair of lips, a tongue, and starts conversing with finesse.

With most of the film shot indoors, Ron Ethan Yohan's score is more minimalistic. He underplays it at certain moments and lets the sound design do the magic. However it is the scenes which work in tandem, that stand out. This is a thriller that has a horror element to it, but the film rarely falls into the tropes of a run of the mill horror. The title 'Game Over' actually fits the film quite well. The elements of a video game are smartly juxtaposed with Swapna's life.

The horror elements used here are not just for jump scares. In fact, there is none. Something as trivial as switching between various CCTV cameras instills a sense of fear. The film is more grounded to the plot and there is so much attention to detail. Even yesteryear games like Pacman becomes a metaphor to Swapna's life.

The film has more to what meets the normal eye. Swapna is trapped inside her house, and whenever she encounters death face to face more often than once. The character and the story are so well interwoven that it is Swapna's fear that saves her life each time. It's not that she overcomes her fear to not die. She lives with it and still, things work out her way, organically.

The film's short runtime helps its cause in a big way. At just over 90 minutes, there are no extras. Not even a single dialogue. If Karthik Subbaraj's 'Pizza' changed the way horror films were made, 'Game Over' is a thriller you wouldn't have seen anything like this before. It's that good. It also addresses mental health in a sensible and matured way and offers a proper perspective on what with deteriorating mental health goes through. Even if one doesn't get the subtext of the film, it would still end up as a gripping edge of the seat thriller.