Anjaam Paathira Review - A Mediocre Thriller Where Nothing Affects.

Suhansid Srikanth

 

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Midhun Manuel Thomas tells that Raatchasan's success pushed him to write and direct 'Anjaam Paathira'. And you can see the similarities all over. The mood. The psychopath's specific pattern of killing. The flashback tragedy. Its all there. But why it doesn't evoke the same gutwrenching stir the former did? The sole reason is how the film places its beats with no visual energy.

 

 

Series of police-men misses out of nowhere and ended up being killed. Their bodies get dumped with their eyes and heart ripped out. A team of police is on mission to catch the killer with the help of a psychologist to guide them. Now this forms a pretty interesting premise for a thriller right? But.. Anjaam Paathira distracts itself with too many incidents, conflicts and it goes all over the place.

 

The flashback of the psychopath is conventionally opened near climax. The tragedy he has gone through is really affecting. But the proceedings doesn't hit you. Why he chooses to kill random police men (in order to divert the media so that they don't trace the pattern) or why the very primal antagonist (the priest) is never treated in the film with importance.. We have no answers!

 

Kunchacko Boban does his role well. The depth and trauma doesn't come across in any of the characters though. But that's again the problem in the writing and majorly with direction! Sreenath Bhasi is the only comic relief and he plays it interestingly despite being offered with a beaten-to-death character. And.. Unnimaya Prasad as team head? A major off! The already uninteresting role it is goes bad when the performance is portrayed even more one dimensionally.

 

Sushin Shyam's score is pretty generic for the genre and adds to the thrill in the film. Shyju Khalid captures the same with the nights where the traps happen. Saiju Shreedharan's editing rhythms the package but it doesn't stop the film from being the self-repeating chunk of sequences it abundantly keeps pouring.

 

By the time the reveal of who is the killer comes up.. we don't have any emotional connect to the reasons he holds. The repetitive sequences in the investigations involving multiple enquiries of CCTV footages, bloody lot of hacking and extensively extravagant number of helicam shots exhaust you that you ended up convincing yourself that you just need the film to end with whatever that will close this case.

 

Bottomline:

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Midhun Manuel Thomas's "Anjaam Paathira" is your everyday thriller with the age-old cliches you associate with the genre. You keep waiting for the big reveal and by the time when it actually happens you are exhausted enough.

Rating : 2/5