A Fairy Tale for the Grown-ups. Toxic lives up to its name and its tagline.
As an audience, we definitely owe a film basic courtesy of experiencing it for ourselves rather than allowing hearsay or prevailing opinion to influence our response. It’s a prerogative of every viewer, to love it or dislike it, but we owe ourselves the discernment to form an opinion based on experience rather than preconceived notions.
And Toxic is anything but nonsensical. It is a deeply layered film, like an onion revealing another layer with every peel. There are small, intricately fleshed-out vignettes, meticulously structured and executed with remarkable precision, each one propelling the narrative forward. Its title and the tagline are the biggest giveaways: Toxic – A Fairy Tale For Grown-ups.
This is not your regular appetiser; it goes far beyond the conventions of a conventional gangster film. Its extravagant, deeply unsettling and deliberately difficult to digest because it lays bare the darker recesses of human mind- the insidious seduction of power, the corrosive nature of greed, the heady intoxication of vice, and the consequences of desires and behaviours left unchecked.
And I have a pertinent question here: What happens when power falls into wrong hands?
Toxic introduces us to a world that unflinchingly explores violence, greed, aggression, addiction, sexuality, possession and control, while gradually exposing the psychological wreckage beneath the spectacle.
And everything that you see on screen feels deliberate. If it’s there, it’s there for a reason. The narrative, screenplay, character arcs, visual language, cinematography, sound, music, and production design seamlessly converge to create an intricately woven world in which every character serves a purpose and every detail contributes to the crimson tapestry.
For me the sheer audacity, out of the box thinking, conviction and unwavering faith in the vision deserves resounding applause. To conceive and mount something this experimental, extravagant and ambitious is no small feat.
There were moments that remained me of Sin City, particularly in the heightened visual and stylisation, but Toxic ultimately possesses a distinct identity of its own.
Is it perfect? No, there is no such thing as perfection. Is it conventional? Absolutely not – not by a mile. Is it easy to digest? Maybe. Maybe not. And that’s precisely the point, it doesn’t ask to be consumed passively. It refuses to spoon-feed its audience like your conventional, formulaic cinema.
It dares to be different. And it demands to be experienced.
For me, Toxic is one-of-a-kind cinematic experience – an audacious, psychologically layered and visually astounding film that deserves to be discussed for its irrepressible uniqueness and experienced on the big screen.
My heartfelt congratulations to Geeta Mohandas, Yash, the producers and the entire team for having the courage and determination to bring such an uncompromising vision to life.
Toxic – 100 percent.
A FairyTale for Grown-ups – 100 percent.
And for me, it isn’t simply a film I watched. It’s a world I entered.
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