Vetri and thrillers have a love story that is probably deeper than the ones in his filmography. Starting from his debut 8 Thottakkal to his recent film Memories, most of his films have been thrillers or its sub-genres, excluding C/O Kadhal. Though his last year’s film Jothi was a medical thriller and 2021’s Vanam was a reincarnation thriller, he shares that the majority of the audience saw those films as sentimental drama and fantasy, respectively.
“Film consumption is very personal and it sometimes varies according to the region of release. Many from South Tamil Nadu didn’t consider these two to be true-blue thrillers, they had different elements to enjoy in them. I am aiming to provide that level of variety with all my films,” he says.
The young actor shares that the pattern with thrillers was unintentional. “I am always up for experimenting with an unexplored genre, but somehow I was offered such serious films in the early phase of my career. Amidst the thrillers, I also did a slice-of-life film like C/O Kadhal. I feel hurt when people conveniently forget that film when talking about my body of work.” But Vetri goes on to admit that it is the commercial entertainers that fetch eyeballs for an actor.
“Even when an actor does a handful of thrillers or romcoms, it is no match for the reach they get while starring in a masala entertainer.” He goes on to share that his next step in cinema is to inch towards those films. “Iravu, my next with Bakrid-fame Jagadeesan Subu and Bumper will hopefully take me a step closer to that.”
His recent release Memories would probably be his last thriller for a while. He cites that the film was offered to him way back in 2019. “We began shooting for Memories before the pandemic and we had to take breaks in between, whenever there was a surge in the COVID positive count. I believe we have given the best possible version of the film to the audience as the director duo Syam-Praveen kept improvising the film on the edit desk.”
Story selection has to be one of the strongest zones of Vetri as the actor has been part of films with extremely unique scripts. Even the ones that missed fairing well in the theatres, were praised for their novel storyline. Did this put pressure on Vetri while selecting new scripts? “Of course, yes. I would rather see it as a responsibility. It keeps growing with every film of mine. I want to keep playing characters that are grounded and close to reality.”