Cold Case

<p>The movie opens with a Hindu ritual in and a Muslim exorcism ritual in . Medha, a journalist leaves her news office while talking to her mother-in-law who is at an . While driving home, M. Sathyajith is called in to investigate a murder, as a result of a skull being found in a bag from a river. Forensic analysis reveals that the murder  was committed over a year ago and the skull belongs to a female aged 25–30 years. The identity of the deceased is then sought. The on the skull, indicate that the victim was a female named Eva Maria, who was from a wealthy family and that her father had left her a fortune before his death. The police investigate her location and traces her family. Her stepmother tells him that she had married a Hindu and remained estranged from them for a while and that during the Easter of 2019, her father met her and possibly patched up things between them. The police also learn that all the land that Eva had inherited was quietly sold to an outsider. On the other hand, Eva’s spirit tries to contact Medha, a journalist currently seeking help for her daughter’s custody case from Advocate Haritha, who is also a friend of Medha, as Eva’s spirit needs Medha’s help. After Eva tries to signal Medha via paranormal occurrences in her house, Medha takes the help of an occult researcher, Zara Zacchai, who tells her the name of the soul as Eva Maria and Medha with the help of Advocate Haritha (who was Eva’s lawyer for her divorce case) and Asif, a colleague starts her own investigation in parallel, unaware that the Police are investigating the case. Sathyajith later meets Eva’s ex-husband and finds out that he was deep in debt because of his divorce proceeding as he had to return 25 million that he had earlier borrowed from Eva to start his own production house. This debt was settled by his now father-in-law who is the owner of the media house where Medha works. Sathyajith traces Eva’s last known location to a working women’s hostel and through multiple witnesses concludes that she was last seen in September 2019 which is the period of her death. However, her phone was active till April 2020 and her Facebook account showed pictures posted in Varanasi till April 2020. He then traces a list of tourists who due to the were brought to the home state by a special government bus service. He finds Eva’s name in that list and concludes that an imposter was posting pictures and sending messages to her friends so that no one reports her missing. Meanwhile, the dental advisor who helped them with the dental implants on the skull, tells him that sometime back they had recovered a human hand in Tamil Nadu and this possibly could link to this case. On analysis, it is found that the hand belonged to Eva and had strands of hair that might belong to the murderer. During the investigation Sathyajith learns that Medha is also in search of the truth. While they are discussing each other’s findings, Sathyajith gets a phone call from his uncle who had seen the impersonator for Eva while returning from Varanasi. All the pieces of the puzzle fit into the place and Sathyajith detects that the killer is none other than Advocate Haritha. Haritha was neck-deep in debt when she was handling Eva’s case. Her father died when a real estate project was mid-way in construction and she fears if the project is not delivered within a month’s period she may be arrested. One day she takes Eva home on the pretext of talking her out of her grief and strangles her to death. Haritha then dismembers Eva’s body, stores it in the fridge, and later scatters the pieces. She then creates fake documents assuming Eva’s identity and sells off Eva’s inheritance and restores her father’s business, She takes Eva’s phone to Varanasi and posts the pictures on Facebook, after which she throws Eva’s phone into the river. She later boards a special government bus service for the trip back to Kerala. Now alerted Haritha goes to Medha’s home to clean up the evidence. While she was there alone, she sees the same that she had used to store Eva’s remains and then, Haritha is killed when the refrigerator explodes. In the final scenes, we see Medha saying she was right about her beliefs that the refrigerator was possessed with Eva’s soul. Sathyajith tells her that there would always be a conflict between faith and logic, as a police officer he can only rely on logic and terms this incident as an extraordinary accident. Later at Medha’s ancestral house, her dead sister’s picture breaks into pieces after Medha plays her radio. In September 2020 was reported to play the lead in an investigative thriller film produced by Anto Joseph, and cinematographer Tanu Balak was assigned to helm the project, making his directorial debut. Sreenath V. Nath scripted the film’s story and screenplay, which is based on real-life incidents, although being stated by the makers as a fictional project and the team added that the film does not have action sequences. Cinematographer , was the first crew member to be announced as part of the technical department, as the rest of the cast and crew were yet to be revealed. was assigned as the female protagonist, whose character was based on journalism. Another cinematographer, , joined the team, as did music composer, Prakash Alex, and editor, . Balak added that Prithviraj’s portions were set mostly indoors and the film has mostly few scenes with crowds, which is set in . The film was launched on 31 October 2020, without Prithviraj as the actor was quarantined for a week, after being recovered from . He later joined the shoot on 13 November. Stills from the film featuring Prithviraj in a uniform was positively received by fans and the character name was further revealed as M. Sathyajith. The first schedule of the film completed on 24 November 2020 and second schedule started subsequently. The second schedule was completed on 7 December 2020, by which production has been wrapped within a duration of 36 days. The film’s soundtrack and score is composed by Prakash Alex and lyrics written by Sreenath V Nath and Anand Sreeraj. The music album features two songs “Eeran Mukil” sung by , and sung by Anand Sreeraj which was released on 25 June 2021. The film was initially planned for a direct-to-digital release in December 2020, was later delayed due to post-production difficulties. In the process, the producers later planned for a theatrical release, since theatres were allowed to operate with 50% occupancy, and fixed the date as 4 March 2021. But the film was postponed indefinitely, and producers reinstated the decision to release on as the functioning of theatres were affected due to the second wave of . Anto Joseph officially announced the plans of digital release, with the streaming rights of and the -starrer , were sold to . On 16 June 2021 the makers announced the release date as 30 June 2021, with the teaser of the film being unveiled on the same day. The trailer was later unveiled on 18 June 2021. released worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on the midnight 29 June, ahead of the original release, and was made available from streaming in 240 countries. -based critic Anna Mathews gave a rating of 3 out of 5 saying “the film has an innovative story track, with the investigative thriller running on two very different propositions, but in a parallel narrative”. of wrote that the screenplay in the first half is “intriguing”, but criticised the writing as it had “failed to live up to the ambition of the script” with “the plot becomes less convincing as the film progresses”. She rated 3 out of 5 in her review. S. R. Praveen of called the film as an “underwhelming horror-thriller that squanders the promising premise that it had”. He further called “The script is rather weak not just in using the thriller elements, but in the dialogue department too. Quite a few of the sequences have the characters, especially the police officers, stating the obvious to each other. This is compounded by the not so great dubbing for some characters.” Haricharan Pudipeddi of called that the film “did take the road less taken with the identity of the murderer”, but “the experiment needed a bit more work for the role was poorly written”. Manoj Kumar R of gave 1-star rating out of 5 and pointed that the film has “a very conventional premise of a dead person seeking justice from beyond the grave or, in this case, out of a rickety fridge”. Giving 2.5 out of 5 stars, of called that the film is “wisely controlled when it dips into paranormal horror clichés such as sudden loud sounds, ominous music and abrupt movement” and called the film as a “reasonably engaging thriller, but it had the potential to be so much more”. Critic Ramya Palisetty of gave 3 out of 5 saying “the film has the right ingredients to keep you on the edge of the seat, but the lazily-written second half tests your patience”. Roktim Rajpal of rated 1.5 out of 5 and called “the film fails to make an impact due to the lousy execution”. Gauthaman Bhaskaran of called the film as an “extremely amateurish attempt” with a “shoddily-written script that completely wastes Prithviraj’s potential, which transformed him into a robotic-run-of the mill man”. Meera Jacob, for the news magazine , gave 3 out of 5 rating and called “the movie does hold the attention of the viewer, particularly during the first half. However, moving toward the climax, it seemed to have been a bit of a let-down [ ]… he mixing of genre holds an optimistic future when executed properly.” Sajin Srijith of gave 2 out of 5 rating, and said “The film’s eagerness to get to the final twist comes at the cost of not-so engaging storytelling”. Sangita Nambiar of , gave 2.5 out of 5 stars rating, calling it as “a paranormal thriller meets police procedural, is a better-than-many watch but definitely not the best or one of the best, it is a watchable thriller, just have reasonably low expectations from it”. Arjun Menon of gave 3 stars out of 5 calling the film as “an old fashioned crime thriller that is designed to evoke the feel of a horror flick and murder mystery simultaneously which does offer a fairly neat premise with little fuzz and great precision in storytelling”. Giving 3 out of 5, called the film as an “okayish thriller”, with “an almost predictable track and cliched moments”.</p>