'Cold Case' review: The plot is the engaging factor in a "cold" thriller

Debutant Tanu Balak' Cold Case was touted and marketed as a supernatural-meets-crime-thriller flick. In this review, we look into whether the film, starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Aditi Balan in lead roles, was able to deliver on its nail-biting, spine-chilling experience.

An unidentified, putrefied skull is found by a layman from the bottom of the lake. ACP Sathyajith (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is called in to crack the case, after intense political pressure, when fingers start to turn towards the kin of a prominent politician. Due to the aged state of the discovered remnant, identifying the victim becomes a herculean task. Meanwhile, Medha (Aditi Balan), an investigative TV journalist who runs her own program on supernatural, paranormal events, relocates to a new house with her daughter. There, she begins to experience strange occurrences which lead her to uncover the reasons for them. At a point, these parallel investigations converge, as both factual and the otherworldly strive to unravel the truth.

Prithviraj Sukumaran in Cold Case

First off, this is a director's film- not in a good way, but not in a bad way either. Tanu Balak's ingenuity can be seen in his attempt to blend two contradictory concepts into the narrative of his film. It can be called a battle of sorts between the logical and the illogical, but we never really get to make a stand; neither does the director. On one hand, we have a highly speculative journalist, who shaken by the things happening in a seemingly haunted house or a specific object (watch the movie to know what that is), goes to a blind clairvoyant, played by Suchitra Pillai, who interestingly does what seems like Parseltongue to communicate with the spirits haunting the house. The path that Medha takes on to discover the reasons for this incessant haunting is in stark contrast to the one Sathyajith takes- one of factuality, reason and proof. His investigative process is textbook and rife with procedural elements. 

Cold Case follows, to an extent, the templates of previous films produced in Malayalam which were filled with investigation-cum-supernatural elements- The Priest, Nizhal, also other crime thrillers whose sole purpose was to scare the viewer- Anjaam Paathira and Forensic. Here, the focus is rather on this unique amalgamation of the paranormal with the factual. All of the aforementioned movies employed the run-of-the-mill technique of scaring and startling the viewer, regardless of whether it made sense or not, or whether it had any relevance to the progression of the plot. Cold Case is no different in this respect; there are tons of jump scares, shot and edited in a deft manner to induce shock in the audience. Not that they are bad- some of the scares succeed in driving the point home, but most of them really begin to tire us. We are left to wonder what importance they had for the progression of the plot, and like its predecessors, were they mere gimmicks to validate its supernatural horror label.

I mentioned before that Cold Case is a director's film. This is because Tanu Balak is able to display his calibre in orchestrating his set-pieces, thanks to its camera and editing. I didn't realize that it was Girish Gangadharan (Jallikettu, Angamaly Diaries) who was behind the camera until the credits rolled in the end. And if you don't know it beforehand, you won't realize it while watching. Gangadharan doesn't gamble with the ceiling-breaking daredevil camerawork here; his gig here is more reliant on building up suspense and horror-inducing lighting. The score also does its work in the horror theatrics of the film, but it doesn't make an impact beyond that.

The most noteworthy aspect of Cold Case is its procedural plot, especially in the Sathyajith side of the narrative. There aren't many embellishments and over-the-top, unprecedented twists; but it takes its time to slowly build up. However, when the pieces come together, also with the Medha storyline meeting at an intersection point, the revelation seems a bit too simple and plain. It has to be mentioned that the attention to detail is spot on- it takes a keen eye to guess how and why some things have been placed in the story rather than setting it up for the convenience of the storyteller. Whether Cold Case could have ventured beyond these possibilities is a question that lingers after one watch. 

The performances aren't that commendable either. They are limited by the demands of a plot-focused narrative, whose improvement could have compensated for the weak characters. But our leads are mere propagators of the story- their actions contribute to the investigation of the case, and don't journey beyond that. It would have been better to incorporate their personal lives, giving more levity and depth to the film's characters. This is more evident in Prithviraj's character, whose only screen time is as ACP Sathyajith, and not as normal Malayali Sathyajith. The effort to write good characters is poorly executed as well. 

Tanu Balak's directorial debut succeeds in orchestrating its technical aspects and scripting an ambitious investigative plot. Cold Case strives to be a cross-genre procedural thriller. What we get is a one-time watchable investigative-cum-supernatural story that is neither spooky nor gripping and doesn't quite make much of an impact. But it's not all bad; the plot makes you want to dig in more, even with its weakly-written protagonists.

Reviewer© rating: 2.5 stars

Runtime: 139 minutes

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