Dridam starts well as this intriguing small-town investigative thriller worthy of the Jeethu Joseph school of suspense, only to trip over clumsy red herrings and over-explanations, notes Sreeju Sudhakaran.
Key Points
- Dridam, presented by Jeethu Joseph, is an investigative thriller about a rookie cop investigating a series of crimes.
- Despite a distraction-free screenplay and a shock reveal, Dridam suffers from cheesy staging, over-exposition, and inconsistent writing.
- Shane Nigam delivers an inconsistent performance as the lead, while the supporting cast is decent but limited by underwritten characters.
Dridam is directed by Martin Joseph, with the screenplay penned by Linto Devasia and Jomon John. But the film’s biggest talking point is the man presenting it: Jeethu Joseph.
And the influence shows.
Dridam comfortably fits into the investigative-thriller space associated with the Drishyam filmmaker’s body of work, even throwing in a cheeky Drishyam reference near the end just to underline the comparison.
The investigation track is pretty intriguing, the plot is almost free of any unwanted distractions and there is a cool twist near the end.
Unfortunately, the film is also plagued with problems that you can associate with some of Jeethu Joseph’s recent films: Cheesy staging and over-exposition.
I mean it’s okay to be inspired by your mentor and embody their spirit of work, but that loyalty shouldn’t have been expanded to the flaws too.
What’s Dridam About?
Vijay (Shane Nigam) is a newly-inducted sub-inspector whose first posting lands him in the sleepy town of Kuzhinilam. The place carries a reputation for being free of major crimes and is presented to Vijay as the ideal safe beginning for his career.
His subordinates are genial and instantly take a liking to him, with one female junior even developing a crush on him. But Vijay’s arrival seems to trigger a strange curse upon both the town and himself.
A dead body is discovered, a private finance firm is robbed, and then, to add to Vijay’s mounting worries, another unidentified corpse turns up.
As pressure builds from both the town’s residents and his superiors, Vijay must figure out whether these crimes are connected and whether worse is yet to come.
What Works for Dridam
There is no denying that Dridam‘s central premise immediately grabs your attention.
A rookie cop caught in a sudden spate of crimes in a town he is still unfamiliar with, while his superiors question whether he has the experience to handle such a complicated situation, is fertile ground for a compelling thriller. Both the mystery and Vijay’s predicament become the film’s strongest hooks.
With no random romance track or songs diverting attention, Martin Joseph ensures that the focus remains squarely on the investigation.
P M Unnikrishnan’s cinematography presents the action in a neat manner, while Sreerag Saji’s background score complements the tension effectively.
The protagonist’s gradual transformation from an efficient but bewildered rookie into someone who slowly loses his puppy innocence through the process is also handled rather well.
The climax arrives with a shocking reveal; a ‘gotcha moment’ that almost feels genuinely clever.
Why almost?
Because the journey the screenplay takes to reach that point, and the way it handles the aftermath, leaves Dridam feeling frustratingly uneven.
Execution Flaws and Lazy Storytelling
Right from the opening act, where Vijay interacts with his subordinates and the townsfolk, several scenes suffer from awkward staging and stilted dialogues.
There is an unnecessary cheesiness in the way the film establishes Vijay’s squeaky-clean image and the admiration others have for him.
In trying too hard to create a picture-perfect setup, the film inadvertently signals that something is clearly off.
Once the investigation properly begins, the inciting incidents are certainly engaging.
Yet the investigative portions become overloaded with characters repeatedly explaining the obvious, restating information, and spelling things out simply to ensure the audience keeps up.
Worse, many of the theories and suspicions voiced by the characters feel less like genuine deductions and more like deliberate attempts by the screenplay to throw viewers off the scent until the eventual reveal.
Some of the red herrings, like the two missing locals, are presented in a clumsy manner that you almost immediately eliminate them from your suspect list. Their supposedly suspicious behaviour rarely makes logical sense unless the screenplay simply needs them to appear shady for convenience.
For instance, one character is said to have stayed away from home for an entire month, yet when he is finally caught, there is barely any valid explanation why he was acting dodgy all the while.
It feels evident that the screenplay simply needs them to appear shady for convenience, so the audience has someone to be falsely invested in amidst the small handful of suspects.
Such an approach feels unfortunate because Malayalam audiences, having consumed some of the finest thrillers in Indian cinema, hardly need things spoon-fed to them, only to later have the rug pulled from beneath their feet in a manner that insults their intelligence.
Inconsistent Character Portrayal
Even Vijay occasionally behaves in ways that feel silly, and this cannot simply be blamed on his inexperience.
Early on, it is established that he has an uncle who is a retired DYSP, yet the film never once shows him consulting the man for guidance while handling such a complicated case. It’s as if the film forgot such a man existed in Vijay’s life.
Near the climax, when Vijay finally zeroes in on the actual criminals and confronts them, it felt baffling that he never considers the possibility of them having accomplices. This is not an impulsive confrontation either, since the film explicitly shows him strengthening his suspicions after rechecking CCTV footage.
Even after the shocking reveal, the film’s awkward staging and constant exposition dumps weaken what should have been a strong payoff.
More irritatingly, when Dridam revisits previously-shown scenes in light of the new revelations, those scenes are conveniently altered to fit the twist. That is simply lazy storytelling.
There is also a weak attempt to give itself a safer, more commercial closure through an action sequence. The inclusion of yet another ‘twist’ within that fight scene was so absurd that it genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Shane Nigam’s Inconsistent Performance
Shane Nigam delivers a somewhat inconsistent turn in the lead. He feels natural as the rookie cop and is convincing in moments that expresses his confusion and rage, but there are also stretches where his body language feels oddly stiff and rehearsed.
The supporting cast of Shobhi Thilakan, Dinesh Prabhakar, Kottayam Ramesh, Krishna Prabha, Prasant Murali, Saniya Fathima and Nandhan Unni are decent enough though most of them are trapped in underwritten characters with barely any room to grow beyond the screenplay’s functional requirements.
By the end, all I could think was that Dridam had the makings of one of the slickest thrillers in recent Malayalam cinema if only it trusted its audience more and understood that clever twists mean little without convincing staging to support them.
Dridam Review Rediff Rating:
