Highway (2022 film)

Highway is a 2022 Indian Telugu-language mystery crime thriller film written and directed by K. V. Guhan and, produced by Venkat Talari through Sree Iswarya Lakshmi Movies and Northstar Entertainment. The film features Anand Deverakonda, Manasa Radhakrishnan (in her Telugu debut) and Abhishek Banerjee (in his Telugu debut) in primary roles. Highway was premiered on Aha on 19 August 2022.

Plot
The film starts with Vishnu (Anand Devarakonda) telling his story.

Flashback: Vishnu is a photographer who lives with his mother, sister and grandmother in Hyderabad. He travels to Bangalore with his long-time friend Samudram (Satya) to shoot a wedding while, Asha Bharat (Saiyami Kher) and her team are investigating the case of a serial killer named 'D' (Abhishek Banerjee) who kills young girls for his pleasure. On other side Tulasi (Manasa Radhakrishnan), a young, innocent and beautiful village girl who lives with her mother and works in a dairy farm, decides to travel to Mangalore to escape from her boss torture to marry her and to meet her father who abandoned them, whereas, D kills another girl making him and Asha close to meet distance.

On her journey, Tulasi bus stops near a Dhaba for rest. As she goes to use the washroom, an deaf old women mistakenly locks her inside. Later, she escapes out only to see that she missed the bus. There an man tries to harass her but the Dhaba owner Jaya saves her and gives her shelter for night. On other side, Vishnu's car gets repaired in middle of the way. He and Samudram fixes it back and travels to the Dhaba (Where Tulasi stays) to see Jaya who is unknowingly is aunt of Vishnu and childhood crush of Samudram. There Vishnu meets Tulasi and falls for her at the first sight. His aunt gives him the responsibility to drop her to Mangalore, while on the other side D tries to kill other girl but fails. In that frustrating, he kills a small kid who works for her. As Asha comes to investigate there she gets the portrait of D from an lodge owner whom she met before to arrest D, as he stayed there.

During their journey, Tulasi and Vishnu gets close and began to have feelings for each other but things turn upside down when Vishnu have to urgently leave for Bangalore and drops Tulasi near Mangalore bus to travel by giving her an phone to call him if any emergency and he leaves, but the bus doesn't start, making the passengers to get down. Tulasi tries to call him, but the call doesn't get connected. There she meets the man who tried to harass her near the Dhaba. He gives her lift by blackmailing her, but shifts the route and tries to assault her again. While trying to escape from him Tulasi calls Vishnu, even though it gets connected they fail to talk. An enthusiastic D who saw this, saves Tulasi from him only to kidnap her in name of help. Poor Tulasi unaware of all these trusts him.

Vishnu regrets leaving Tulasi alone. Samudram understands his situation and asks him to go back to Tulasi while he travels alone to Bangalore. Vishnu travels back to the place he left Tulasi and brings the man who tried to harass her to the police. There he decodes that D has kidnapped Tulasi and registers the complaint to Asha. He takes pic of the portrait of D and they began to search for Tulasi but in vain. Meanwhile, when D tries to kill Tulasi he accidentally slips into a river, but Tulasi saves him changing his intention to kill her. Later, Vishnu sees courier company DHDC in his way and asks their help to find Tulasi to which they agree.

After a lot of search, Vishnu gets message from the company's driver who finds Tulasi with D in his ambulance and they forward it to him and he shares the same to Asha. Asha and her assistant who decodes D location tries to arrest him, but he overtakes them by taking the gun and shoots them. A terrified Tulasi tries to escape but he threatens her and forcefully takes her away.

Vishnu comes to the location and sees the assistant dead and Asha alive with injuries. He takes her to the govt hospital nearby and leaves to save Tulasi.

Present: D takes Tulasi to a forest in a truck by killing a passerby. He tells her, his motives behind the murders - He was an ordinary ambulance driver who used to enjoy when someone lose their lives. Soon, he meets a beautiful girl and decides to change and leave a peaceful life with her, but she leaves him for another rich guy she meets, making D go mad. An enraged D later kills her and finds the same happiness in killing other similar girls like his lover. D also explains Tulasi that the difference he saw between them and her is that she is all alone and no one will come to save her.

Before they could complete their conversation, Vishnu arrives to save Tulasi. Tulasi attacks on D and goes back to Vishnu, but D comes in between them and tries to kill them both, while a tiger from the forest arrives on time and attacks on D. It kills him as his prey while Tulasi and Vishnu reunite.

The film ends with Tulasi and Vishnu telling the entire story to media leaving the nation in shock.

Production
After watching Abhishek Banerjee's performance in the Hindi web series Paatal Lok, Guhan cast him for the role of a serial killer. The film's launch event with a puja ceremony was held in May 2021. It was extensively shot on the highways near Hyderabad, Araku Valley and Chikmagalur in approximately forty days. Filming was wrapped up in October 2021.

Soundtrack
The film score and soundtrack album of the film is composed by Simon K. King. The music rights were acquired by Aditya Music.

Release and reception
Highway was premiered on Aha on 19 August 2022.

Neeshita Nyayapati of The Times of India gave a rating of 2 out of 5 and wrote that "Highway is passable fare at best, but given the kind of talent involved in the project, you can’t help but wonder if the story had the potential to be fleshed out better". Balakrishna Ganeshan of The News Minute also gave same rating and wrote that "Highway sticks true to the crime thriller genre without meandering into unnecessary details or scenes". Pinkvilla too rated the film 2 out of 5 and stated "Highway is barely clued into the emerging plot devices in the Indian OTT space, especially those concerning crime thrillers, which have long ceased to present obvious formats".

Writing for The Hindu, Sangeetha Devi Dundoo opined that the film "unfolds on familiar lines and delivers thrills from time to time. However, it falls short in the final portions that seem stretched and dilute the potential for a nail-biting finish". India Today 's Roktim Rajpal stated: "Highway had the potential to be a dark and disturbing thriller but it ends up being a damp squib".