Thudakkam on OTT: Vismaya Mohanlal’s launchpad gets panned after streaming debut and rightfully so

Vismaya Mohanlal can fight – she is trained in multiple martial arts formats after all. She wanted a platform to show the world what she could do and chose a film for the same. All that director Jude Anthany Joseph had to do was cobble together a wafer-thin plot and let her show off her moves. Strangely enough, when the film hit theatres in early August, it had a fairly good reception, with most calling it a ‘decent one-time watch’. The film dropped on OTT a few days ago and since then, though, that narrative has changed and how.

The film follows Meenu (Vismaya) and her father Ravi (Saikumar), who've just moved to a new place where he serves as village officer. The fallout of Meenu's stray encounter with a psycho killer is what Thudakkam is all about.

Thudakkam, according to netizens who’ve now seen the film, is bad with terrible performances and managed to draw eyeballs only because Malayalam superstar Mohanlal’s name was attached to it. And that is the absolute truth. For starters, Vismaya’s major shortcoming is her lack of talent in the acting department; she has a severely limited range of expressions and body language reminiscent of a nervous tick – jumpy and uncomfortable.

Also read: Thudakkam Review: Vismaya Mohanlal makes a fairly strong debut in Jude Anthany Joseph's latest film

Producer Antony Perumbavoor’s son played the film’s big baddie. He gets the creepy vibes right, but there’s nothing more to the character to make him a memorable villain. All that Manoj K Jayan was missing was a halo in his cop role, while Mohanlal’s cameo was unnecessary and doesn’t elevate the proceedings. If his 5-minutes screen time was meant to be the film’s big USP, well, that was a definite misfire.

For a film that managed to avoid brickbats during its theatrical run, Thudakkam really does not have anything going for it. It’s bland at best, despite its core message about women learning martial arts to protect/defend themselves. The film's moderately positive reviews makes one wonder why audiences shunned Prithviraj's Khalifa only weeks later.