Helen movie review: A survival drama that stays true to itself.

When I started watching this movie, I had no idea what I was expecting, even after watching the trailer, but I can totally tell you that it 100% BEAT MY NON-EXISTENT EXPECTATIONS. It was totally worth every single second I spent watching it.

It's not one of those survival movies that are hard to watch after a certain point. In fact, I could watch the entire thing a second time without getting bored or scared. I found myself rooting for Helen and most of the other characters.

Everything was so cleverly placed. When she's trying to break the fan in the freezer, we cut to the fan near her dad, and then we see his attempt at finding her. There's never this feeling of "I wanted to see more of this before we got back to that." It all flowed n a t u r a l l y.

Every scene that led up to her being stuck there was brought back in the second half. I don't think even a single scene was out of place or unecessary. In the first half, there were scenes about cigarettes, nursing, Canada, and love, and I questioned why they were there. The trailer clearly showed something about her getting stuck in a freezer, so naturally, I was thinking, "Its been nearly an hour. Where's the freezer?" (I was honestly quite interested in the movie, freezer or no freezer, but every time she went into the freezer in the first half, my brain thought, "NO SHE'S GONNA GET STUCK!" but obviously, she didn't.) Anyway, the second half brought all those little things together. And there were a LOT of those little things.

The first of those little things I noticed in the movie was her talking to her dad, trying to get him to quit smoking. It sounds like something from EVERY movie that ANY doctor would say to their family, but later on, the cigarette and lighter become useful for her while in the freezer. The next little thing, literally right after the smoking scene, was when she was throwing away the trash. She complimented the garbage collector's earrings. But it's not the garbage collector that comes back to help her later— It's her kind personality towards strangers, specifically the doorman/security at the mall, who remembered her because she always smiled and waved at him when everyone else just looked down and walked on.

One of the bigger things, though, is her intelligence and presence of mind. She wanted to go to Canada and practice nursing so that she could earn more and pay off her debt (similar to Parvathi from Take Off), but while in the freezer, she takes a look at the brochure for Canada, and realizes that it's gonna be cold there, too. But while looking at the brochure, she also saw an igloo, and realized that she could also build a little igloo-like thing inside the freezer to stay warm.

Literally every scene of her in the freezer is really smart. She doesn't just sit there crying— She gets up and tries again. She made her own gloves and shoes, treated her own dislocated foot, managed to stop a spinning fan, built a shelter from the cold, and somehow found some edible food. She never gave up.

To me, it's these strong and relatable characters in Malayalam movies that makes the industry always seem new and interesting.

Also, the fact that Malayalam movies can make a small stretch of time (sometimes with the plot filled with nothingness) into a cinematic masterpiece is always amazing.

People always say, "What goes around, comes around." This movie is the definition of that saying. Every single good thing that Helen did came back to help her again when she needed it. Some might've come together in the most unlikeliest of ways, like Azhar and Paul, but they did come around.

Random Irony: At the beginning, Helen said she didn't want her dad to get some disease and have her run around hospitals for medicines and all, but in the end, she ended up in the hospital with her dad having to pay the bills and get medicines and all that.