Mirage Review: Jeethu Joseph's Psychological Maze is Brilliant, Until It Gets Lost in Itself

Mirage Review: Jeethu Joseph's Psychological Maze is Brilliant, Until It Gets Lost in Itself

By Rashesh, Founder & Chief Critic | Published: 27-10-2025

There are directors who make films, and then there are architects who build cinematic worlds. Jeethu Joseph has always belonged to the latter category. From the moment Georgekutty first buried a secret under the floor of a half-built police station in Drishyam, we, the audience, became willing participants in his meticulously crafted games of logic and deception. He doesn’t just tell stories; he constructs elaborate, high-stakes puzzle boxes and invites us inside. His latest offering, Mirage, is perhaps his most claustrophobic and psychologically vicious puzzle yet—a two-hander thriller that locks its characters, and us, in a room with their past. For 90% of its runtime, it is a searing, nail-biting masterclass in tension. It’s that final, crucial 10% where the architect’s hand begins to tremble, threatening to bring the entire, brilliant structure down.

Mirage opens not with a bang, but with a disorienting gasp. Anand (Asif Ali) and Meera (Aparna Balamurali), an estranged couple on the brink of a bitter divorce, awaken on the dusty floor of a single, windowless room. The air is thick with the scent of decay and regret. They have no memory of how they arrived, their phones are gone, and the only door is bolted from the outside. Their sole connection to the world is a crackling voice from an old intercom, a dispassionate puppet master who informs them that they are part of a “game.” To earn their freedom, they must complete a series of tasks, each designed to force them to confront the very lies, betrayals, and unspoken truths that shattered their marriage.

This is not a review that will simply recount the plot. To do so would be a disservice to the intricate clockwork of Joseph’s design. Instead, we must take out our cinematic scalpels and deconstruct this film piece by piece—its direction, its visual language, its screenplay, and the towering performances that hold it all together.

The Director's Crucible: Jeethu Joseph's Unmistakable Signature

Though the film stars Asif Ali and Aparna Balamurali, its most dominant presence is Jeethu Joseph himself. His directorial control is absolute, turning a single-room setting—a death knell for lesser filmmakers—into a sprawling psychological landscape. Joseph understands that true tension isn’t about what you see; it’s about what you don’t see, and what you are forced to imagine. He eschews cheap jump scares in favour of a slow, creeping dread that seeps into your bones.

Consider the scene following the first task. The voice on the intercom falls silent. Joseph holds the shot for an uncomfortably long time. We watch Anand pacing frantically while Meera sits frozen, her eyes wide. There is no music, only the sound of Anand’s frantic footsteps on the wooden floor and the faint hum of a faulty light fixture. In this silence, the room expands and contracts. The shadows in the corners seem to lengthen, to harbour intent. This is Joseph’s signature: he directs the negative space, the quiet moments between the chaos, and makes them scream louder than any scripted line.

Compared to the sprawling, real-world logic of Drishyam or the cat-and-mouse chase of Memories, Mirage is an intensely internalized film. Joseph isn’t just manipulating evidence and alibis here; he is manipulating memory and emotion. He uses the camera as an instrument of interrogation, often placing it in tight, suffocating close-ups that deny the characters—and the audience—any escape. It’s a bold, confident piece of filmmaking that proves he is a master of suspense, regardless of scale.

A Prison of Memories: Cinematography and Production Design

A film this contained lives or dies by its visual grammar, and cinematographer Satheesh Kurup (a frequent Joseph collaborator) does career-defining work here. The visual palette of Mirage is a deliberate assault on comfort. The room is bathed in a sickly, desaturated light, a purgatorial palette of muted greys, rusted browns, and faded blues. The only source of warmth is a single, bare bulb that casts long, predatory shadows, turning a simple room into a chiaroscuro nightmare.

Kurup’s framing is relentlessly claustrophobic. He frequently shoots through doorways, from behind broken furniture, or using reflections in a shard of glass, constantly reminding us that we are observers to a deeply private unravelling. One shot, in particular, is staggering in its impact: as Anand is forced to confess a devastating secret, the camera doesn’t show him. It remains locked on Meera’s face. We see every micro-expression flicker across Aparna Balamurali’s features—disbelief, dawning horror, heartbreak, and finally, a chillingly cold resolve. By denying us the sight of the confessor and focusing solely on the impact of his words, the scene becomes exponentially more powerful. The production design contributes heavily, turning the set into a third character. The peeling wallpaper, the water stains on the ceiling, the broken music box at the center of one task—every element is a visual metaphor for the decay of Anand and Meera’s relationship.

Fractured Souls: Asif Ali and Aparna Balamurali's Tour de Force

A film like Mirage is an actor’s gauntlet, and both Asif Ali and Aparna Balamurali deliver performances that are nothing short of breathtaking. They are not just acting; they are engaged in a raw, emotional war of attrition.

Asif Ali, an actor who has spent years proving his incredible range, delivers one of his most complex and vulnerable performances. His Anand is not an easy man to root for. He is a cocktail of arrogance, guilt, and panicked desperation. Ali masterfully peels back these layers. In the film's first half, he is defiant, trying to project control. But watch his body language after the second task fails. His shoulders slump, the bravado evaporates, and he shrinks into himself, becoming a boy lost in the dark. It’s a painful, honest portrayal of a man being systematically stripped of all his defenses, a far cry from the charming everyman of Kettyolaanu Ente Malakha or the stoic resolve of his character in Uyare.

If Asif Ali is the exposed nerve, Aparna Balamurali is the unbending spine. After her National Award-winning turn in Soorarai Pottru, expectations are sky-high, and she soars past them. Her Meera is not a damsel in distress. She is intelligent, observant, and resilient. For the first act, she is a reactor, processing the horror of their situation. But a distinct shift occurs midway through. A quiet strength emerges, her fear hardening into a cold, analytical fury. Balamurali conveys this entire arc through her eyes. There is a scene where she challenges one of Anand’s carefully constructed lies, and the gentle, wounded woman we first met is gone, replaced by a prosecutor who will not be denied the truth. Their chemistry is electric, not with romance, but with the painful intimacy of two people who know exactly how to hurt one another.

The Unreliable Narrator: Where the Screenplay Falters

For all its technical and performative brilliance, the screenplay, also penned by Joseph, is where Mirage stumbles. The setup is flawless. The central conceit is a powerful engine for character revelation, turning a high-concept thriller into a profound marital drama. The tasks they are forced to perform are wickedly clever, each one a metaphor for a moment of failure in their relationship.

The problem lies in the final fifteen minutes. Jeethu Joseph, the master plotter, feels the need to explain everything. The meticulously built ambiguity and psychological tension are sacrificed for a final twist that, while clever on paper, feels both overly convoluted and emotionally hollow. It introduces external factors and motivations that weren’t sufficiently foreshadowed, requiring a lengthy, almost breathless monologue of exposition to tie everything together. It transforms a film that was about the "why" of a broken relationship into a film about the "how" of a contrived plot. It’s a classic case of the narrative architect showing us the blueprints after we’ve already toured the magnificent house. The emotional catharsis we crave is replaced by intellectual admiration for the plot’s mechanics, and that’s a poor trade. It’s the one element that keeps Mirage from achieving the timeless perfection of Drishyam.

Final Verdict

Mirage is a frustratingly brilliant film. It is a masterfully directed, visually stunning, and superbly acted psychological thriller that holds you in an iron grip for the vast majority of its runtime. Asif Ali and Aparna Balamurali deliver tour de force performances that will be remembered and discussed for years. It is a testament to Jeethu Joseph’s unparalleled skill as a craftsman of suspense. However, the film's over-engineered final act keeps it from true greatness, opting for a clever explanation when a resonant emotional truth was within its grasp. It is a near-masterpiece that chooses, in its final moments, to be a complex puzzle instead. A fascinating, frustrating, and ultimately unforgettable experience.

Rating: 4 / 5 Stars

Who Should Watch This?

• WATCH IT IMMEDIATELY IF: You are a fan of Jeethu Joseph’s puzzle-box filmmaking, love intense psychological thrillers that prioritize dread over gore, and want to witness two of Malayalam cinema's finest actors operating at the peak of their powers.

• APPROACH WITH CAUTION IF: You demand perfectly logical, airtight endings. The final reveal requires a significant suspension of disbelief that might frustrate viewers who appreciated the grounded realism of the preceding two hours.

• AVOID IF: You are looking for a light-hearted watch, a straightforward action film, or a story with clear-cut heroes and villains. Mirage operates exclusively in the grey, and it is an emotionally taxing journey.