Forensic
Spoilers Ahead. The film starts with a horrifying scene about a
kid who goes to a butcher’s shop with his father and on the way back home, he
sneaks the chicken’s head into his pocket and adds it to his collection of
animals. This is the first sign of most of the psychopaths, they start harming
animals in their childhood – we’ve seen this in The House That Jack Built and
many other films about psychopaths. The film progresses to another setting, a
police procedural where the protagonist is a forensic expert – we come across
the murder of a young girl. From here, the film takes about 3-4 turns in the
plot, sometimes I was impressed by the plot twists and sometimes I was slightly
disappointed because the drama in the promised setting would’ve probably been
more interesting than the plot twist itself.
This film talks about children being capable of murders, they give
us a shock when they talk about a real case of the youngest serial killer –
they also use the original identity of the killer and it being a real case, it
makes us more uncomfortable. This is the exact reason, why crime documentaries
can give us chills down our spines and movies have to be so good to match up to
them – a good example would be the recent limited series by Netflix, Don’t F**k
With Cats. When we come across incidents like these, the reason it makes us
uncomfortable is – it questions our faith in humanity and it questions our
whole purpose in life. After such a dramatic event, we see a brilliant twist in
the interval. After this the film again takes different directions which is
what I was a bit disappointed with, children being capable of killing in itself
would’ve been a strong theme to explore for a film and since they don’t stick
to it – it feels like they haven’t used the opportunity to explore that from
all facets. I was definitely excited by the plot twists, it filled my puzzle
solving appetite – which is at the maximum while watching thrillers like these
but it didn’t fill my appetite of experiencing and exploring different levels
of drama in such extreme cases.
The ending scene is a testament to the writing capabilities of the
Malayalam film industry, they have a scene where we see an accident happens and
the villain dies. This doesn’t even feel like a setup which needs a pay-off,
but they give an outstanding pay-off where we see that the hero unhooks the
seat-belt of the villain and hence, he dies. This might be a little
inappropriate, considering the vigilante justice that has happened there but
the underlying message of ‘wear seatbelts’ could’ve have been plugged in better
because such cliché messaging immediately puts the audience off, unless it’s
used as a tool for such an amazing set up and pay off scenario.
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