Sabdham stars Aadhi Pinisetty in the lead. Also featuring Lakshmi Menon, the film was released today in Telugu and Tamil.
Telugu Funda’s reveal of the basic plot:
Vyoma is one of the few expert paranormal investigators in the country. When dual suicides rock a medical college in Munnar, its anxious management drafts him to investigate what is going wrong. Right off the bat, nothing looks normal at the college. Vyoma gets it going as soon as he learns that dead bodies there exhibit abnormal physical attributes. His investigation puts him on the path of friendship with a resident doctor named Avantika (Lakshmi Menon). A decades-old research holds the key to many mysteries.
Telugu Funda’s take on the Performances:
Aadhi Pinisetty’s rigid dialogue delivery makes the proceedings feel distant. Even when he is helping out a distraught mother, you remain emotionally unmoved. The actor looks too sophisticated for the role and too rigid for the emotionally exhausting portions. Others like Lakshmi Menon are average. Barring Simran and Laila (both star actresses from the 1990s), none else are familiar to the Telugu audience. Redin Kingsley, the comedian, is wasted in an uninspired role.
Telugu Funda’s take on the Technical Departments:
- Music: Thaman’s striking score lends an atmospheric quality in the first half. Later on, the quality of the soundscape loses its sheen. This is not an ultra-loud film yes, but the BGM does feel overpowering at times.
- Cinematography: Arun Bathmanaban’s camera work is top-rated.
- Production Design: Good but doesn’t add anything new to the hill station sub-genre.
- Making Values: No compromises were made.
Telugu Funda’s Analysis:
Looks like the director of this film is fond of a book he has always wanted to write but didn’t: “A dense primer covering numerous topics and adding little to your understanding”. If you feel the title of the unwritten work is lengthy and bizarre, you have essentially understood the quality of the dialogues and screenplay in Sabdham. Far too many lines/dialogues are filled with expository wordings. In the name of making a paranormal thriller, director Arivazhagan floods the film with jargon and tiresome dialogues. Knowing new terms and new incidents would have been fun had they contributed to the movie-watching experience. But you are disconnected in every possible way in the second half.
The Aadhi-Redin Kingsley track is obviously stupid. Why would a rare paranormal investigator not have a professional assistant? Why would he choose to live with a joker who doesn’t know advanced tools from toys?
In one scene, Aadhi’s Vyoma visits a morgue where he interacts with the supervisor/in-charge. This in-charge is a specialist but he takes forever to give him the most paranormal information related to the dead bodies. Any educated or uneducated person in their senses would share that info first thing.
The second hour plays out like a hedge-podge of genres. Even the sight of tormented children doesn’t move you in any way. You are just indifferent to the proceedings at this point because the actors themselves come across as fairly uninvolved.
Telugu Funda’s Verdict:
Sabdham attempts to blend paranormal investigation with a medical thriller, but ultimately collapses under the weight of its own convoluted plot and stilted dialogue. Too much ‘sabdham’ and too little ‘paramartham’.
Rating: 1.75
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