This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on February 6, 2020.
“Your sleepless nights are coming,” an odd character tells Dr Anwar Hussain (Kunchacko Boban) as he stands in the dark smoking a cigarette. Hussain is more troubled by this seemingly innocuous encounter than by the interview he’s just had with serial killer Ripper Ravi (Indrans in a small but truly chilling role, setting the tone for what’s to come by making my skin crawl), but his premonition that something strange is about to happen proves to be true.
When a policeman is killed in odd circumstances – snatched from the street on his way home after a rummy party, his eyes and heart cut out, his body dumped in a gypsum quarry– Anwar’s friend ACP Anil Madhavan (Jinu Joseph) sees the opportunity to help Anwar move towards his goal of becoming a staff criminologist by adding him as a consultant to the investigation team, which is headed up by the no-nonsense DCP Catherine Maria (Unnimaya Prasad). As more policemen are murdered, the team soon realize they have a serial killer on their hands – and not just any serial killer, but one whose motivations are difficult to discern, as there are, initially, no apparent patterns or reasons for his selection of which policemen to kill, and one who is, in a manner perhaps uncharacteristic for a serial killer, willing to take on accomplices to help him achieve his aim (though he discards them brutally when he no longer needs them). Complicating matters is the fact that the killer seems to be aware of every move the police are making in their investigation, leading the police to believe that the killer has somehow hacked into their systems and is able to watch and predict their every move. Even the attempts by the police to counter this – Anwar brings in his own master hacker, Andrew (Sreenath Bhasi) prove futile in trying to catch the killer.
Anjaam Pathiraa reminds me a lot of Aashiq Abu’s Virus from 2019 – yes, they share much of the same extended cast (and even some of the same crew, including cinematographer Shyju Khalid and music director Sushin Shyam), but it’s more than that. Both films are stylish, meticulously crafted investigative thrillers, and both films take a similar approach to how they portray their investigations, relying on neither melodrama nor overwrought emotions in order to convey the sense of urgency that is inherent in each situation. Both films are well-written and well-crafted technically. Anjaam Pathiraa also feels like a very unexpected film from Midhun Manuel Thomas, whose previous films were all comedies. Not that humour is missing from Anjaam Pathiraa: Thomas uses it to great effect in order to break the tension in the script, whether it’s in the cynical comments offered up by ACP Anil, or by the attitude of hacker Andrew, who is affronted at the thought of another hacker besting him.
But it’s Kunchacko Boban as Anwar Hussain who truly anchors everything that happens in this film. Boban has long been a House Fave here at Casa Totally Filmi, in particular because, over the years, he’s made an effort to transform himself and his craft, not content to just remain a chocolate boy hero, but turning to character roles and being willing to be part of ensemble casts or take on characters with shades of grey in order to be part of films that are interesting and relevant. To that end he’s taken on roles such as the terrible husband to Manju Warrier in How Old Are You?, and the irritible policeman Ramendrun in Allu Ramendran. Here, his character is a seemingly ordinary family man who is truly fascinated not only by deviant criminal behaviour, but by how that criminal behaviour has been shaped by its Kerala setting.
Thomas’s film is inspired, as it tells us, by events in the news, which fits nicely with Anwar’s attempts to understand the criminal behaviour he’s researching and investigating. It sometimes makes for a workman-like approach to the investigative thriller genre, though, something that didn’t really live up to the promise of the film’s opening with Ripper Ravi – something I’ve hesitated to write about, because a portion of Ravi’s interview with Anwar Hussain is given in voice-over, and is not subtitled (something I’ve seen from subtitlist Vivek Ranjith before, and which I personally find quite frustrating). But Ripper Ravi’s interview sets the tone for the film, and Ravi implies that sometimes there is no logic, no reason to why someone kills: he, for example, kills purely because he finds it thrilling to bash someone’s head in, revelling in what he terms the “ecstasy” of that moment. But solving a mystery with no apparent motive (other than an emotional payout for the killer) presents a much bigger challenge, and Midhun Manuel Thomas, despite initially presenting us with the potential for a complex perpetrator, chooses in the end to play it somewhat safe. That said, Anjaam Pathira still manages to keeps us guessing with its twists and turns, and remains engaging until the very end, and ultimately, it’s always interesting to see a writer/director move into a different genre of film than his audience might expect from him.