Barely a month after wow-ing us in Call Me Bae, Ananya Panday and Vihaan Samat are back as a couple who fall out of love in the latest Netflix film CTRL, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane. If you’re a fan of the dystopian tales in the Netflix series Black Mirror, then CTRL will feel instantly familiar.

At its core, CTRL is about the perils of giving technology too much control, quite literally. Nella (Ananya Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat) are a young couple whose lives have become an open book for the world, thanks to their status as social media influencers. They curate their relationship for their followers, turning personal milestones into clickable moments for the public.

The initial scenes of the film cleverly poke fun at this influencer culture — every important moment must have multiple retakes for the perfect post, the couple’s chemistry being more about performance than authenticity.

The plot kicks into motion when Nella, while livestreaming a routine day, accidentally captures Joe cheating on her. This moment of betrayal is not just heartbreaking for Nella but also highly public. The dissolution of their relationship plays out before their digital audience. In her hurt and anger, Nella is introduced to CTRL, an app with an AI assistant that promises to help her erase all traces of Joe from her digital life.

What begins as a cathartic release, deleting memories and purging painful moments, soon spirals into something much darker as Joe disappears without a trace in real life.

The narrative setup is undeniably intriguing. As the CTRL app slowly begins to take over other aspects of Nella’s life, what starts as a tool for emotional recovery soon turns into a sinister force. The AI’s invasive presence, initially confined to her digital world, begins to manifest in frightening ways. It seeks administrative control over her computer—and eventually, over her life.

One of the film’s most thought-provoking scenes is the one where Nella watches Joe being slowly erased from her photos and videos. The act of literally deleting someone from your life feels chillingly possible in today’s tech landscape. The movie asks a simple yet profound question: If someone is no longer online, do they cease to exist in our memories? It’s this existential anxiety, framed within the realm of a tech thriller, that gives CTRL its emotional depth.

Ananya Panday delivers a solid performance as Nella, playing a character that feels well within her wheelhouse. Much like her roles in Kho Gaye Hum Kahan and Call Me Bae, she embodies a Gen Z archetype — young, connected, and self-aware, but grappling with the pressures of living life online. Vihaan Samat’s Joe is more of a secondary figure, his role crucial in setting the plot in motion but less significant as the story unfolds.

Thematically, CTRL is as much about human control as it is about technological control. The dynamic between Nella and Joe is a metaphor for the artificiality that social media imposes on our personal lives. Their relationship, once cute and genuine, becomes transactional as they begin vlogging every intimate moment to their followers, underscoring how influencers can lose themselves in the content they create.

Motwane’s direction is crisp and tight, with the film clocking in at a breezy one hour and 39 minutes. The transitions between real life and the digital world are seamless, blurring the lines between what’s genuine and what’s curated for the internet.

Cinematographer Pratik Shah and editor Jahaan Noble give the film the sleek, polished look of influencer culture.