nights – Movies of the Soul

What is the movie about? :: Assistant Commissioner of Police Stalin Joseph IPS (Indrajith Sukumaran) has built a fine reputation as a police officer who could solve even the most difficult cases. This makes the Police Commissioner, Rama Das IPS (Renji Panicker) assign a clueless case to him, especially as it involves the murder of the son of Inspector General of Police at the parking lot of a night club. This victim named John Kurian (Maahin Krishna) was brutally stabbed to death in front of his newly found girlfriend Fidha Fathima (Ashika Ashokan), who reluctantly agree to be the eye witness to the crime while being held back due to the fact that she is engaged to someone else, with a wedding set to happen soon. Circle Inspector Jose Thomas (Nishanth Sagar) and Sub Inspector Diya Prabhakar (Divya Pillai) also join the team of Stalin, but the situation feels too complex with Fidha not able to provide any extra relevant information. But a woman named Radhika S Nair (Avanthika Mohan) who runs a nearby café is known to have problems with John, but she reminds them that the case was withdrawn after he made payment for the destruction he caused in the café.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: Radhika reminds the police officers that there was a friend of John who had a fight with him in her café on the same day. The police track him and find his name as Kiran Sivadasan (Mahesh Nair), who is part of a family which has NRI connections. But they soon find him hung on a tree, dead by midnight. They try to find any clue, and can find only a vehicle which had passed through the area – they feel like it is a significant finding. But the vehicle they tracked is found as owned by Kiran’s sister Keerthy Sivadasan (Sandhya Nair), but she had just returned from the United Kingdom after her brother’s death. It feels like a dead end, and they feel that the two friends were murdered by someone who had a problem with their ways of life. The notes about murders which were identified around there also means nothing to the investigation. A local reporter Sradha Das (Reba Monica John) is also after the murders with her own investigation trying to make a name.

And what more is to follow here as deaths keep happening with a murderer on the loose? :: Stalin has further problems with his stepbrother George Joseph (Sagar Surya), as he has not been doing anything substantial after the death of their father. The police soon find another dead body in the nearby river, and it is Deepak Dinakaran (Sajal Sudarshan), son of the local MLA who has significant hold on the ruling party and is close to the Home Minister of the State. He was earlier chased by the police for possession of drugs, and the MLA is angry that no breakthrough was made in the case. There is a note found related to this murder too, and this is proven as a clear case of serial killings. They are able to link all of these incidents to a school where all these victims had studied together, where a particular incident had happened and came on news. This make them feel that the next victim could be Althaaf Hussain (Deepak Manohar) who was part of their gang, but they do not realize that there are more twists to follow, and he might not be the next target. Can this puzzle be solved before more murders occur?

The defence of Dheeram :: This is a solid investigative thriller premise with nicely interconnected plot points that keep it interesting from the initial stages to the end. The mood of the movie could be nicely established, and we see that there is the dark thriller mood initiated early enough. From the beginning to the end, there is suspense maintained, and there are twists to make the audience ponder over the same, and with some nicely placed red herrings in between, there are not many easy twists for the audience to get it right. The movie feels technically sound right from the beginning; there seems like a certain amount of quality on what we see – the visual tone supports the overall theme of the movie which do not have much for redemption in a world of chaos which reflects the reality of humanity. The background score supports the movie really well, and the music remains effective, as we are transported to that world not just visually, but with what we hear, and the world remains what it really is, affected by human evil, and when it comes from the past and still exists, hope is surely not a thing with feathers or wings. For the same, there is zero humour in this dark, chaotic self.

Positives and negatives :: With performances to remember, the movie gets its own addons to the positives. Reba has always deserved more from the Malayalam movie industry, and Nishanth Sagar after his returning roles makes us feel that he would need more screen space every time. There is a message about parenting and the emotional connection is active. The way in which connections are made and how it all comes to an end with some classic dialogues in the end needs mention too. The movie focus is also completely on the case, and there are no deviations, certainly no subplots which had the tendency to drop in; no silly romance here too, as we see a film which never tries to move out of a set path. The excessive violence in the end felt unnecessary, as the flashback was already talked about and the movie was already coming to an end, and violence over violence was never going to add anything to the already established mood. Maybe the idea was to justify the murders committed by the killers, making the viewers feel that the victims deserved their fate more than hundred percent, but that was already established for most of the audience – for bringing pure evil right out of burning hell, this is not a fantasy horror slasher movie from any angle. For now, we can fast forward something on Amazon Prime Video.

The performers of the soul :: Indrajith Sukumaran manages a different level as a police officer, and this divergence was clearly visible in Angels, another movie with its own serial killer, whose identity is revealed in a different way, and with some fine twist that comes out of nowhere in the end. He plays that kind of a police officer who never really deviates from his path, and that determination along with the need to do what is right, is reflected well, and with his moments by the ending, we are left intellectually satisfied. Divya Pillai makes a fine police officer, like we had seen with Anju Kurian in Others – Divya’s support role works really well, and so does Nishanth Sagar’s police avatar. The three police characters feel different in essence, and thus seems to complete the team well – then there is Renji Panicker in a usual role without any trouble. Meanwhile, Reba Monica John is brilliant in her avatar that goes beyond a timeline, and this would be her performance to remember in Malayalam cinema. Varalaxmi Sarathkumar comes is all of a sudden, and scores well, while Sagar Surya and Avanthika Mohan’s work remains notable, and Aju Varghese has a good serious role.

How it finishes :: We have had so many investigation thrillers with serial killers on the loose, and this one has a fine place among them – from Memories to Anjaam Pathiraa, Forensic, Kooman, John Luther, Abraham Ozler and others, we have had some of the most memorable movies with less hype. But with our movie here, we should have had more hype, and more screens for sure. With some reduction of violence, especially in the final moments, it could have easily achieved the same, and the shows could have had more audience. Even now, it can boast of a fine place among its kind. If it had released some years earlier, I would not have waited for its release on Amazon Prime Video; the serial killer investigation movies are the kind of works which we never really miss at the theatres. But as the reviews at Movies of the Soul never really get shared by the celebrities or official pages of movies, the idea of early theatre reviews was lost for us. As we understand that movies have paid reviews going for them, we can only keep watching movies on the OTT platforms, most of which are available with a simple mobile recharge and Amazon delivery.

Release date: 5th December 2025
Running time: 149 minutes
Directed by: Jithin Suresh T
Starring: Indrajith Sukumaran, Divya Pillai, Reba Monica John, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Nishanth Sagar, Aju Varghese, Renji Panicker, Sagar Surya, Avanthika Mohan, Dinesh Panickar, Sreejith Ravi, Sabitta George, Sundarapandiayan, Devi Ajith, Sojan Angel Varghese

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✠ The Vampire Bat.

What is the movie about? :: Ashik (Asif Ali) is the popular stage performer in a village on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border who comes to Cochin hoping to work in a movie, after the villagers collect money from their own people to make sure that he gets a chance. Siddharth (Unni Mukundan) is an engineering graduate who is spending his time doing nothing other than to stay at home up-to that extent that his father has to throw him out of the house. Vijay (Vinay Forrt) is an angry young man who was suspended for getting into a fight with another employee in the same company he was working for. Scobo Johnson (Nedumudi Venu) is an old man who is staying alone, and looking for company. Bored and with no plans for future, he comes up with an advertisement calling for bachelors to stay at his place, free of cost – it gets to the three young men who are ready to come right away.

So, what happens next? :: Ashik finds Cochin and the movie world a lot different than what he had thought, and finds problems in even doing the simplest works. He goes to various auditions, but none of them work – he does find a new friend though, in the form of Vinod (Aju Varghese) who is also looking forward to acting in movies, one way or the other. They decide to attend the acting workshop held by Manoj Kuruvila (Mukesh), who is a famous movie director. But even that doesn’t seem to help the two who are more clueless than anything else. Siddharth who does nothing other than staring at girls, even consults Doctor Jayamurugan (Kochu Preman), but his life goes on in the same way until his brother recommends him for a job under Shivani (Honey Rose), which he gets despite performing terribly during the interview. What follows is a terrible mess at the office.

And what follows the events? :: Ashik and Siddharth are not just the ones reaching a higher level of their problems, as Vijay has a bigger issue at hand. His anger issue is more or less the result of something which happened in the past, and his girlfriend Meghna (Milana Pournami) tries to get him out of the same, but with no positive result. Scobo Johnson is the silent witness to all these, and tells them that there are two ways out of it, one the difficult path, and the other, the shortcut. Are the three good enough to get out of the mess that they are in, or is at least Johnson skilled enough to take them through their journeys? Can things finally take a positive twist of events in their lives which haven’t really had much to talk about otherwise? Will their upcoming experiences leave them as better people than who they already are? Only time will tell.

The defence of Avarude Raavukal :: Vinay Forrt successfully leads the group of young men here towards their objectives, as motivation runs right through this one with inspirational dialogues, and featuring the rise of unexpected tales of success; emotional side is strong here. The movie asks its viewers to keep trying, as the fish does; it provides this message without missing its plot, and the direction that it shows is the right one for the new generation. The presence of movies like Mili, Aby, My God and Su Su Sudhi Vathmeekam has proved the same, but Avarude Raavukal is more the common person’s story than the rest. There is also the presence of some nice humour in between. There is also some beautiful music in this flick, beginning from “Ethetho Swapnamo” and through “Vaadaathe Veezhathe”, both bringing different but nice feeling. The feel-good effect stays, and despite the certain delay in the movie’s arrival and the morning shows canceled, we are glad to have this movie working and going well enough to provide enough motivation.

The claws of flaw :: The movie doesn’t go that close to perfection as the director’s earlier combined venture, Philips and the Monkey Pen, and what we expected was surely more. There are certain ups and downs in between for sure, even as everything seems to have kept at a certain level as much as possible. There are some occasions when we wonder if these things, which do look more and more possible, can ever be solved by the protagonists. The inspirational story is also not something new, and the old man is also a rather strange character, whose twist in the end is even stranger; this one could have just gone simpler and close to life towards the end. Even in the beginning, the movie had taken some time to get going. The cameo roles in the end by Shine Tom Chacko, Sunny Wayne and Sanju Sivram were rather unnecessary too, and the same can be said about a cricket match when it could have been just the engineering classes. You will find the weird and missing sides of the plot, but you can avoid them as they are not that significant.

Performers of the soul :: Asif Ali who is coming out of the late, but sure success of Adventures of Omanakkuttan has done a fine job with a character which had quite something to perform out there. Unni Mukundan comes out of the dismal movie which was Achayans, and makes good use of what was a rather easy job for him. Vinay Forrt had a little less to work with in Georgettan’s Pooram brings the best of them all – his story remains the most interesting one in the whole movie, and he is the backbone of the flick. Aju Varghese should be powered by the grand success of Godha, and does a pretty good job when he is there. Honey Rose who was last seen in My God which was an under-appreciated movie, makes a comeback after two years – not much to do, but good to see her back. Milana works through limited expressions in this one. Nedumudi Venu has some nice dialogues which prove inspirational, and forms the pillars of the movie’s progress.

How it finishes :: It has been a long time since a Malayalam movie with an interesting and long list of star cast released, and being the first movie to release for the Eid holidays, Avarude Raavukal surely has an early advantage among the others which are to follow. Shanil Mohammed, who had earlier directed Philips and the Monkey Pen with Rojin Thomas has his first solo outing here. The flick had won Kerala State Film Award for Best Children’s Movie and Kerala State Film Award for Best Child Artist for Sanoop Santhosh. This one might not create that much of an impact, and has a lot of heavyweights to follow. Getting itself to the list of feel-good movies with messages, Avarude Raavukal will leave with a positive effect more than anything else. There are not many other things that we need for this special season.

Release date: 23rd June 2017
Running time: 131 minutes
Directed by: Shanil Muhammed
Starring: Asif Ali, Unni Mukundan, Honey Rose, Vinay Forrt, Aju Varghese, Mukesh, Milana Pournami, Nedumudi Venu, Sudhi Koppa, Lena, Ambika Mohan, Kiran Aravindakshan, Nisha Sarangh, Aishwarya chandran, Kochu Preman, Shine Tom Chacko (cameo), Sunny Wayne (cameo), Sanju Sivram (cameo)