Honestly, I can confidently say CTRL is one of the best cyber thrillers out there right now. The experience of every character in the film perfectly shows the dark side of social media and technology and how even though we think these gadgets and platforms are making our lives better, they actually consume us, create addictions, and lead us toward self-destruction as we become so dependent on technology that we lose control of our lives. So, through the cast and characters, you’ll clearly see how this message comes across.
Spoilers Ahead
Nella
Honestly, the more I see Ananya Pandey’s performances, the more impressed I get with how each film, she seems to develop and grow, and in this film as Nella Awasthi, she did not disappoint. She perfectly captured the essence of today’s Gen Z girls, who are obsessed with sharing their private lives on social media and making everything public. What stood out was how she didn’t just portray Nella as a girl deeply in love with her boyfriend Joe, but also someone ambitious who tried to turn her relationship into a brand to gain followers and secure collaborations. Nella wasn’t interested in a quiet life running her father’s bakery, she wanted freedom, success, and to live her dreams alongside the love of her life. But when she found out Joe had cheated on her, Ananya’s portrayal of Nella felt so real, honestly, the hair-pulling, the shouting, the anger. Even though people called her names like “witch” for her outburst, I think her reaction was raw and honest. After all, who wouldn’t lose it after a five years of relationship ended like that? And instead of turning to sad music to process her pain like most of us do, she used an AI assistant so she could completely erase Joe from her life.
It felt relatable in a way, as she just wanted to take control after Joe blamed her for their relationship losing its spark. But, Nella never wanted Joe to end up dead, so naturally his murder traumatized her. Despite their messy breakup, she still cared enough to seek justice for him, so she started to research his connections and tried to expose the truth about Mantra Unlimited. She was brave to post the last video which Joe made before dying online even though Nella knew the risks. In the end, she got blamed for his death and was sent to jail, but you could see she fought hard to get to the truth. Nella’s ending was truly heartbreaking as going from being a social media queen to ending up back at her dad’s bakery felt like a very drastic shift which the poor girl did not deserve. Nella had to wear masks so people wouldn’t recognize her and call her a murderer. And even though she knew how dangerous the CTRL app was, she still went back to it to rely on the AI assistant for happiness again. That really showed how much we, as a society, are hooked on social media and technology, no matter how much damage it causes, it feels impossible to escape it because, without it, we feel slow, disconnected, or just incomplete. In the end, maybe Nella needed the AI to feel happy again, to gain followers, and to be someone important in the world once more, even if it meant losing control of her own life and going back to that self-destructive cycle yet again.
Joe
Vihaan Samat, as Joe Mascarenhas, is not what we would call a toxic boyfriend really, because his character is portrayed as someone who is charming, a seemingly perfect boyfriend to Nella as he wants to portray themselves as a power couple in social media, but deep down he is quite flawed. Because even though at the beginning of the story Joe appears to be the ideal boyfriend who is supportive, successful, and in sync with Nella’s ambitions as they build their influencer empire together, as the story goes on we see how Joe struggles with the pressures of being the perfect couple and having a perfect relationship and how their relationship started to felt like a chore to him. And rather than communicating about it and being honest about it, he ended up cheating with his girlfriend, that too on their fifth anniversary! This naturally becomes a major turning point in the story as Joe shows guilt and confusion, he’s someone who made a mistake and doesn’t quite know how to handle the situation. His apology to Nella sounded really half-hearted, and he blames her for the relationship losing its spark, which just shows that he is so spineless that he cannot even take full responsibility for his actions. But we can’t say that Joe is malicious, because there is a certain vulnerability to the character, especially when Joe tries to warn Nella about Mantra Unlimited’s scam and about Project Unicorn toward the end of the film as he wants to keep Nella safe, and maybe even though their horrible break up he needed her support maybe as a friend even! Also, the fact that he tried to risk everything and researched Mantra Unlimited’s scam from their data analyst and took a journalist’s help just proves that he is not a selfish character but someone who actually wanted to help people so that the public doesn’t trust apps like such. Even at the very end, when he got murdered, he took the risk to expose the secret of the app, and with his help, Nella got to know about the CTRL app and its scams. The ironic way in which he ended up becoming an AI assistant in the app felt like a terrible ending to his character. It seemed like a form of payback from the Mantra app, as if to show that they would always retaliate against people who tried to defame them.
Bina
Bina’s character was played by Devika Vatsa, and she was Nella’s roommate at first, and also the one who first told Nella about Joe’s disappearance. She tried to protect her friend and warned her not to be involved in Mantra Unlimited, but Nella did not listen to her, and that’s why she ended up in jail.
Shonali
Kamakshi Bhat played the role of Shonali as the woman Joe cheated on Nella with. She also worked in the public interest tech group alongside Joe. Despite her history with Joe and knowing that Nella might be angry at her, Shonali didn’t let their personal issues get in the way and was determined to help Nella with the truth. Shonali was the first person to inform Nella about Mantra Unlimited and Project Unicorn and revealed how Joe, along with a data analyst named Karan and a journalist named Mayank, had been researching the company’s scam to expose it. Shonali suspected that this investigation was the reason that Joe had gone missing because she knew about how the data analyst also got murdered for this same reason.
Manish
Samit Gambhir played the role of Manish Hirani, Mantra’s lawyer, who visited Nella in jail to threaten her about dropping the case, saying they would make her life a living hell and sue her for 500 crores otherwise. However, if she agreed to stop pursuing the case, they promised not to harm her and would delete all her digital footprint. Clearly, he put her in a difficult dilemma and forced her to drop the case to save herself.
