There are bona fide horror films that you watch with the conclusive belief that supernatural entities are real. Then there are police procedurals that unravel a mystery entirely based on science and evidence. In director Tanu Balak’s Cold Case, we witness both scenarios. A single case of a missing woman is investigated by two individuals—a TV reporter specializing in horror stories, Medha (Aditi Balan), and a suave cop, Sathyajith (Prithviraj Sukumaran). If Medha is seeking answers to certain strange events happening at her residence, Sathyajith is on a hunt to trace the origins of a recently retrieved human skull.
Cold Case is an interesting title for the film. Besides the brutal nature of the homicide being investigated, the source of Medha’s fear is a refrigerator that is possessed by a spirit. While she enlists the help of a clairvoyant, Zara (Suchitra Pillai, effective), Sathyajith chooses to disentangle the mystery with logic and intuition. While it is never clear why a single mother like Medha would risk her life despite a possible threat, supercop Sathya is a sharp officer who never goes wrong.
The parallel narratives offer very few surprises. Both Medha and Sathyajith are extremely smart people who always know how to connect the dots. This habit of the leads always getting it right does not help the film’s suspense-thriller narrative in any way. Cold Case employs an unimaginably straightforward storytelling format and, therefore, fails to deceive its audience.
Tanu Balak also sprinkles his screenplay with an array of unnecessary characters or pointless references to them. Be it Sathyajith’s supportive boss (interestingly, a woman) or Medha’s godman-worshipping mother-in-law, they exist in the picture only to add excess reels. The writer also throws in a couple of characters who either stare or speak suspiciously, but they do not reappear after their initial introductions. I vouch—deceiving an unassuming viewer is an art, and so is scaring the daylights out of them.
ALSO READ: ‘Ezra’ review – a neat attempt to reimagine horror genre in Malayalam
The primary disconnect for me was with respect to Medha’s motives. We understand her inquisitiveness, but she lacks a pronounced emotional arc to justify the search she embarks on. She never seems to consider the potential threat her actions pose to her school-going daughter. If Medha’s part is written in an utterly plain manner with zero depth, actor Aditi Balan appears equally disinterested. I wanted to like Prithviraj, in all honesty, but here he suffers from the ‘Nayanthara Syndrome’, where his flawless makeup and styling make it impossible to take him seriously. The suspense, visible from a distance, is lacklustre, defying logic in ways only the writer could have concocted.
Among the few aspects I liked in Cold Case is the presence of the clairvoyant (Pillai) and the episode of scrying. Even though infested with endless jump scares and an appallingly loud original score, her scenes establish a definitive ambience that the film otherwise lacks. The investigation process, too, is intermittently engaging, but a severe lack of twists plays spoilsport in Balak’s film.
The closing scene of Cold Case, involving Medha’s deceased sister, hints at a prospective sequel. The second time around, I hope the writer avoids unnecessary characters, refrains from focusing excessively on its boring (and bored) main leads, and stops piling on loopholes that do little to justify the final reveal.
Rating: ★★
Cold Case is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
