Maayavan (Eng: Mystic) is an 2017 Indian Tamil science fiction crime mystery thriller film co written, produced and directed by C. V. Kumar. The film features Sundeep Kishan and Lavanya Tripathi in the lead roles, while Daniel Balaji and Jackie Shroff play supporting roles. Featuring music composed by Ghibran, Maayavan was launched in February 2016. The film was dubbed in Telugu as Project Z. C.V.Kumar’s debut directorial Maayavan got an average opening at the Chennai Box office.
Maayavan starts with the death of a renowned neurologist and scientist Pramodh. His mysterious gym trainer (Sai Dheena) is seen paying his gesture of respect at the funeral before leaving. The plot then shifts to a young crime inspector Kumaran (Sundeep Kishan) chasing a petty thief, where by coincidence he witnesses the same gym trainer murdering his own wife. Kumaran chases the murderer who corners him and halts him with a blow to the head. In the ensuring tussle, Kumaran manages to kill the murderer. A meeting with psychiatrist Aadhirai (Lavanya Tripathi) ends on a rough note when she deems him medically unfit to rejoin the police force. Later when he himself faces symptoms which attribute to PTSD, he mends his ways with Aadhirai who helps him overcome his disorder. A second murder happens in which a famous actress is killed. Kumaran visits the spot and finding the similar blood stains from the earlier murder and many other similarities, including the same brand of cigarette smoked by the murderer, he is stressed up and gets into a shock. Aadhirai finds him and treats him for his PTSD and makes him normal. He meets with Rudhran and introduces her to him as a motivational speaker. Kumaran, now fitter, sets out his investigation and finds out that a makeup man (Mime Gopi) must have done the murder as he is the prime suspect. Upon investigation, He also gets to know that both the makeup man and the gym trainer showed a totally different behavior, few days before they committed the murders. Kumaran tracks down the makeup man but he jumps to death before confessing anything.
Next Murder happens and the victim now is a renowned scientist Mr. Narayanan (Kathi Ravi). Kumaran tries to find some evidences in the scientist’s home and he finds a book written by Rudhran. Thinking that Rudhran might know the scientist, Kumaran visits Rudhran’s office and finds that his behavior has changed. His own dog starts to bark at him and he has also started to smoke recently, that too the same brand that was found in the earlier murders. Kumaran deduces that some strange thing is happening and Rudhran could either be murdered or become the next murderer. He nabs Rudhran when he shows his more ruthless and cold blooded side when he kills his own dog. So Kumaran takes Rudhran into custody and while signing on the FIR, Rudhran signs a different name, and then corrects it to his own sign. Kumaran notices this and finds out that, the first sign was signed “Pramodh”.
A brief investigation reveals that Pramodh is a colleague of late Mr. Narayan when they worked together at Indian institute of neurosciences. A senior official Velayudham (Jayaprakash) after hearing the incidents of the case, reveals that Pramod was involved in a project called Project Maayavan, which could enable a person to store his memories into a hard drive which can be transferred to another individual by injecting a newly invented gel, which would house millions of nano-transmitters and when injected into the brain these transmitters will attach onto the neurons. When the person dies, his memories could be transmitted to another individual whose brain would already have been injected with the gel. The memories of the new person will first be erased and the old person’s memories will be transferred via the nano-transmitters. This way the person (his memories) will not die and will live for ever. To prove his theory Dr. Pramod works day and night, and during this experiment he even sends a patient to coma, but he is not bothered about human life and wants to succeed in his mission. After Dr. Narayan becomes the Director of the Indian Institute of Neuroscience he stops Dr. Pramod’s project.
Raged by this, Dr.Pramod uses himself as the subject and successfully transfers his memories in a hard-drive and then commits suicide. Once he dies his memories gets transferred to the Gym trainer (who was already inserted with the gel by Pramod). And once he dies, he transfers his memories to the make-up man and now to Rudhran. By the time Kumaran solves this and finds that Pramod’s next target is an army general Major Sathyan (Jackie Shroff), Pramod who is now living in Rudhran’s body commits suicide and finally he successfully arrives into the major’s brain. The major invites Kumaran and says that his technology will let him live for more than 1000 years and no one can stop him.
With a clue from Pramod’s wife, Kumaran finds his secret lab where Pramod has his memories stored. Pramod successfully retrieves the hard-drive containing his memories black-mailing Karna and in the process killing him, his wife and his children and also killing Velayudham and DIG. He then kidnaps Velayudham and goes to the institute lab to let him switch to another body. Kumaran tracks him down and a gun-fight ensues. Finally Kumaran realizes that his girl friend (psychiatrist Aadhirai) is the next subject. If the major dies Dr. Pramod memories will transfer to Aadhirai’s body, leaving Kumaran with a difficult choice.
Twenty years later, Kumaran is happily married to Aadhirai and they have a son. It is then revealed that Kumaran has trapped the major in his secret basement and has kept him alive all these years.
Directed by C. V. Kumar
Produced by C. V. Kumar
Written by Nalan Kumarasamy (Dialogue) C. V. Kumar (Additional Dialogue)
Screenplay by Nalan Kumarasamy
Story by C. V. Kumar
Starring Sundeep Kishan, Lavanya Tripathi, Jackie Shroff, Daniel Balaji
Music by Ghibran
Cinematography Gopi Amarnath
Edited by Leo John Paul
Production Thirukumaran Entertainment
Distributed by Studio Green & Abi & Abi Pictures
Release date December 14, 2017
Running time 121 minutes
Country India
Language Tamil
