Cold Case

The movie is more than 2 hours long but only has 45 minutes worth of a basic whodunnit story, that becomes so obvious after an hour. To people who watch crime/horror/thrillers , skip this!. This could have been made into a 45min long tv episode, which would have made it bearable. Prithviraj does his role well , as an investigator, but thats it!. Nothing else is remarkable. Compared to drishyam (1&2), anjaam paathira, mumbai police, memories, nizhal and ratsaachan, "cold case" is as cold as a cadaver, lacking a sense of good direction and screenplay.

It was good to see two parallel investigation of the same case in the beginning but later it became boring.

Lack of technical issues can be seen throughout the entire film due to the covid 19 pandemic.

Film crew shouldn't have introduced Aditi Balan to mollywood through such a above average movie,there was nothing to perform her when considering her potentiality.

Even climax twist couldn't make an impact on the viewers.

It should have been a good film if they had removed the supernatural elements and traditional horror film making strategy.

A Thriller with zero thrills!!

Poor Direction, Unnecessary dialogues,Unbearable : with cheap jump scares and bad editing cold case is a below-average movie.

Cold Case treads the thin line between supernatural horror and crime-mystery genres. It is told through two perspectives: the investigative bits via ACP Sathyajith (a suave-but-deadpan Prithviraj Sukumaran) and the paranormal bits via journalist Medha (a sleepwalking Aditi Balan). Cold Case isn't a character-driven film - both Sathyajith and Medha are mere plot-forwarding devices with no real arcs to themselves (wait, Medha's kinda got one that isn't fully explored?). The horror elements of Cold Case backfire big time, right from the props (a funny-looking refrigerator with a bluish backlight) to the generically staged jumpscares. The procedural scenes lack punch while the dialogues come across as highly superficial. The final twist, while not entirely predictable, feels half-baked with lots of missing links (and an awful score - what's with the abrupt intro of rock?). Several characters, scenes, and situations are left underwritten. On the plus side, there's solid cinematography work by Gireesh Gangadharan.

P. S - Can we get rid of kids, dolls, and flickering lights in films that portray the supernatural?

Cold Case (2021) : Movie Review -

Cold Case looked promising from the trailer itself as the required elements were present there. With the final product it has few surprises for you but that depends on what kind of mindset you have. It has two theories running at the same time, one is a logical thriller where a cop is on the hunt of a killer. Second is supernatural faith, the unknown of power which is experienced by a journalist. These two completely opposite features reach the same destination but it leaves you with a question of which one to believe? This is something new and experimental for our audience but somewhere it looks unrealistic in logical World.

The film tells the riveting story of a complex murder case, parallelly investigated by a police officer and an investigative journalist in their own way, who eventually cross paths to unravel secrets they never imagined. Just like any other thriller it has suspense till the end and it is literally unpredictable to guess the killer. This is where the film scores its watchful points. On the other side, it has supernatural powers and beliefs to prove the same but as a logical human being, i am not sure how many of us would believe it. Though, a reference of true story would have made a Big difference for the reliability of the story. It still doesn't go too down because we have some chunk of audience who believes these unknown powers in their real life.

The film is powered by brilliant performance from all the actors. Prithviraj Sukumaran is technically and practically very nice as Satyajith. Aditi Balan as a journalist doesn't look much of a journalist but otherwise she has done a fantastic job in rest of the scenes. Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli has came as a big surprise from every perspective, let's not spoil it here. Other actors are also fine with their particular small small roles. The background score is immensely engaging and creative as it offers new tunes with the same old touch. The Cinematography is okay and the editing is decent. 20 minutes less and it would have looked more gripping.

Tanu Balak attempts to give a rise to new theories in thriller genre and he definitely deserves attention for that. However, as a whole, the film could have been better as a pure thriller. You see, these murder mystery scripts always come with a burden because they are intended to please a section of smart audience and not masses. So, even their innovative ideas looks mediocre sometimes as that smart audience has already seen many great thrillers from all over the world. Cold Case is bit cold but a hot-headed shock and surprise to the audience. It's just a matter of you choice, mindset and its conflict between your belief and logic. You have to choose one of them to like this thriller, and in both the ways, it's pretty much watchable.

RATING - 6.5/10*