Stephen

What do you do when a guy walks into a cop station confessing he has killed nine women? Nothing about the sentence is a spoiler because there’s nothing Stephen (Gomathi Shankar) hides when it comes to the horribly casual ways in which he says he has killed them: this is how I stabbed, this is where I stabbed, he tells the flabbergasted policemen, who can’t understand how this man, who looks like your average person off the street, can be a cold-blooded murderer.

The psychological thriller Stephen opens with a chase to find a serial killer responsible for murdering nine women. Filmmaker Mithun’s feature twists the tale by revealing the killer early on. The Tamil film is more about Stephen’s past and motives that led him to become a cold-blooded killer. As investigators and psychologists probe into his mind, the movie paints a sympathetic picture until that shocking ending. It’s a switch and bait that almost works.

The initial frames of Stephen feature a young boy looking up at a giant wheel in awe. Soon, he begins hearing voices of his mother and father asking him to join them on the ride. And when he gets on the giant wheel, it spins. Watching director Mithun Balaji’s two-hour-long Stephen, you understand that the wheel never stops once it begins spinning. Stephen Jebaraj (Gomathi Shankar) confesses to the serial killing of nine women in six months. He surrenders to the police matter-of-factly. Michael (Michael Thangadurai) is entrusted with the job of finding the motive behind the murders. Helping him in evaluating Stephen is psychiatrist Seema (Smruthi Venkat), who, through her conversations with him, uncovers the truth behind the murders.