Sabdham Movie Review: Aadhi Pinisetty and Arivazhagan’s film amplified by technical brilliance, but is emotionally mute

2.5/5

Sabdham Movie Plot:

Ruben (Aadhi Pinisetty) is a paranormal investigator who is called to work on the case of mysterious college students’ suicides at a medical college. While working with his own theories, he meets Avantika (Lakshmi Menon), junior lecturer and resident doctor who does not believe in supernatural and is working on her thesis on hallucinations. But when a third student also dies in a similar mysterious fashion, the case gets murkier.

Also read: Sabdham director Arivazhagan Interview: I’m aware that comparisons with Eeram are bound to happen

Sabdham Movie Review:

Even as it might sound unfair to mention Eeram, Arivazhagan’s debut directorial and horror film, while reviewing Sabdham, there are some eerie similarities when it comes to both the films. Ruling out the elephant in the room, or in this case, the spirits of gone who come back haunting, Arivazhagan uses a sensory medium or element as a communicative tool between the love-seeking dead and venom-filled living. Arivazhagan understands that when the living is still hungry and engulfed by greed, so much so that they can do anything ruthlessly, there is no harm in showing dead, by all their means, seeking to revenge. But what worked brilliantly in Eeram is the emotional connect that never stood like a sore thumb, which unfortunately Sabdham fails to capture.

After three medical students die in mysterious ways, in common words, suicide, we are made to understand how they were haunted by a particular sound. Precisely, the screeches of 1000 bats. Very much like Eeram, Arivazhagan coats his film with the blue-tinted film rolls, this time a medical college which was once also a church and housed many disabled children serves as the backdrop. There is a breathing time for about half hour or so that Arivazhagan gives us to introduce Ruben, who grew up hearing grandma stories, to settle down to solve the case of the medical college deaths, with some banter he has with his local help Arokiyam (Redin Kingsley). But his constant back and forth with Avantika, who believes in different ideologies than him, is an attempt to lead you on a different direction. There comes the interval; the plot thickens and the backstory is revealed.

Also read: Aadhi Pinisetty Interview: We didn’t take the pressure of how to make Sabdham better than Eeram 

As Arivazhagan unties each knot that he made in the first half, the perspective changes but the empathy isn’t evoked. The story clearly takes on the difference between noise and sound, with senior actors Laila and Simran stepping in. It is at this point, Sabdham becomes more unnecessarily complicated plot that is brushed surface level. When characters are introduced at later stages, and painted angelic or even demonic, it feels a momentous and lethargic method to convince the audience to go along with the story. Similar to all horror films, there is a brief flashback, and why the ghosts use sound as an element of communication. Had only Arivazhagan explored this in detail rather than as a passing flashback sequence somewhere in the third act, Sabdham could have resonated much effectively.

Having said all, Sabdham’s USP is its technicality that comes from the sound department. The bat screeches, cracks of furniture, clicks of footsteps, musical notes, hand claps, and more to mention, are precise and add value to film watching experience. But strip Sabdham off its sound production, the writing needed even more emotional depth and investment to get connected. Aadhi resumes his subtle acting which helps the story, and Lakshmi Menon gets her due with some sequences to perform, but the last-minute revelations and screenplay meddles with horror genre.

Sabdham Movie Verdict:

Sabdham is a technically strong film which sets a great premise for a horror film. If you go past some cliches, you begin to feel the film is getting somewhere. But falls into the pit of stereotypes with no extraordinary choices, and becomes a regular template-adhering story.