Driysham 2 (2022) written and directed by Jeethu Joseph

Earlier this year, I reviewed the Malayali movie Drishyam (Visual) and really enjoyed it. It was a solid crime drama about a father trying to help his family after his eldest daughter accidentally killed a rapist. And the central alibi could have pulled right out the Golden Age. So it was with some interest that some friends and I sat down to watch Drishyam 2.

The movie takes place seven years after the events of the previous one. Georgekutty and his family are doing pretty well, all things considered. Georgekutty is now the owner of a movie theater where he gets to show off his favorite movies and is even working on a film of his own (though the production is going quite slow, to his wife’s frustration.) The family now lives in a nicer house. Georgekutty even has fancy CCTV at the theater and his old TV repair shop. Youngest daughter Anu is in her rebellious teenager phase, but she’s making friends at her school. There’s even hope of marrying off Anju, the eldest. Yes, life is looking very good for Georgekutty.

But there are shadows darkening the family’s lives. Anju suffers from nightmares and seizures from the trauma of Varun’s murder. Anu’s love interest has an unhealthy interest in the murder. Georgekutty’s newfound success breeds resentment among his neighbors, who are now more willing to believe that his family was involved in Varun’s murder, and it’s affecting his daughter’s marriage prospects. And the police haven’t given up trying to nail the family.

And unbeknownst to anyone, Georgekutty was seen that fateful night. The witness was arrested that same night and doesn’t quite realize the implications of what he saw, but he’s a desperate man, and there’s a reward offered for any information on Varun’s body…

After finishing the movie, my first thought was that I didn’t like it as much as the first one. But that’s a little unfair. Drishyam 2 is better paced than its predecessor. It’s still about an hour before the plot really kicks off, but there’s more intrigue since we know about the Sword of Damocles over the family’s head. And the midpoint has a really good twist that recontextualizes what we’ve seen so far.

My main issue was with the structure of the film, which really isn’t its fault. The original Driysham had a really fascinating cat-and-mouse game and central problem (How did Georgekitty fake an alibi?) Here, the tension comes from Georgekutty being oblivious to the tightening net around him, meaning we’re tapping our fingers waiting for it all to explode. This means, however, that the counterplays are all confined to the last half-hour of the movie. They are foreshadowed, but, like the first film, not in a way where you can watch and predict what the endgame will be.

And don’t get me wrong, the endgame is great. But it lacks the sheer impact of the first movie. To be as vague as possible about both: In the first film, Georgekutty beats the police in part because he’s able to manipulate them into destroying their own case. He knows how they think and act and exploits that. When he wins, it feels like well-deserved karma. Here, his plan boils down to "lie,” with his machinations meant to make that lie plausible. And they are good machinations, but because we’re not given the same insight into what he’s doing, they lack some oomph. It just felt implausible to me that he was able to get the police off his back with this plan, even if one of the main ideas is really clever. Maybe it would have helped if, after we get the evidence that “proves” his family is innocent, we were given a few minutes to see the aftermath and wonder how he managed to pull it off, but instead we get the moment and the explanation right after that.

Really, I’m just complaining that nothing can beat the final shot of the previous film.

There are also a couple of loose ends. The bit with Anu’s boyfriend being interested in the murder goes nowhere. The resentment towards Georgekutty from his neighbors also doesn’t impact anything, which is a missed opportunity in my view. Georgekutty’s plan in the previous film hinged on public sympathy, and it would have been interesting to see him try and account for a lack of it this time around.

But again, most of this is just me disappointed that I didn’t get the movie I wanted to watch. In the end, I have to give Jeethu Joseph credit for making a sequel that really does feel like a plausible outcome of first film. If you liked Drishyam and want to see Georgekutty win again, this is a solid sequel. Just keep in mind that this is a different film. Recommended.

Drishyam (2013) written by Jeethu Joseph

I really didn’t know what to expect from Drishyam (Visual). I knew it was ostensibly based off a Japanese novel, but that didn’t tell me much.* The film, written and directed by Jeethu Joseph, came out in 2013 and proved to be a hit in the Malayalam-speaking part of India; it’s one of the top 10 highest grossing Malayalam films of all time. Not only has it produced two sequels, but it’s been remade in different languages (the Hindi version seems to be the most well-known) and for other countries. There’s a Chinese remake out, and Korean and American ones in the works.

The film stars Georgekutty (Mohanlal), a kind of lazy cable TV serviceman who lives a simple, humble life with his wife Rani (Meena) and two daughters, Anju (Ansiba Hassan) and Anu (Esther Anil). Georgekutty dropped out of school at a young age, and so is a bit skeptical of his oldest daughter’s schooling, but ultimately it looks like he’s coming around. He has a good relationship with his in-laws. The only real conflict he has is with a power-tripping local cop. Yes, life is pretty good for Georgekutty.

That is until Anju goes to a nature camp, where she meets Varun Prabhakar, the only son of an Inspector General of Police who’s just as spoiled and entitled as that implies. He takes a video of Anju showering and tries to blackmail her into sex. Rani walks in on the whole thing, there’s a struggle…and Varun dies. When Georgekutty gets home that night, he instantly realizes how bad this is for them. There’s no way his family will get a fair shake considering the prominence of the victim, so their only hope is to cover up the death. The full might of the police will be on them, but Georgekutty has one major advantage:

He’s watched a lot of crime shows.

Drishyam takes a while to get going. The first hour or so of the movie is just setting up the family dynamics. I don’t in-theory object to this, but it goes on for quite a while. Not helping is that Georgekutty is kind of a sexist jerk. It’s valid characterization and probably fitting for a man like him, but it made me slightly uncomfortable. It’s thematic, since the movie is about a family patriarch doing what he needs to do to protect his family, but I can see it being a little off-putting. Once the murder happens, a lot of this stuff from the first part falls by the wayside a bit. Thinking back on it, it felt like the movie was divided into two distinct halves with wildly different tones. It makes sense; murder would put a damper on happy times with your family, but it was noticeable.

But the second half is where this movie gets really interesting for blog readers. Georgekutty and his family pretend to go on a religious retreat as an alibi for the murder. Indeed, they’re able to present plenty of evidence showing they were nowhere near the crime scene…but we as watchers know that the retreat was already over. So how was the alibi faked? Like Sleuth, this isn’t a fair-play mystery; most of the details, including some last-minute complications, are arranged off-screen. But man is it a good alibi. The movie’s tagline is “Visuals can be deceiving,” and the alibi is a masterclass in manipulation, with carefully worded questions and seemingly unimpeachable evidence combining to make a nearly unbreakable alibi. The scene where Varun’s mother explains how it was done is excellent. Freeman Wills Crofts’s Inspector French would have been honored to break this alibi.

And the ending is magnificent. If I’d watched it in a theater, I would have hooted and hollered in my seat.

All in all, I really liked this movie. Again, the first half drags very slightly, but it’s not a huge issue. Those of you who like inverted mysteries or good alibi busters will like this one. If you can find a good subtitled version—the Hindi language version on YouTube looks good, though me and my friends watched the original Malayalam—I’d check it out. Highly Recommended.

*I’m not naming the book because the similarities are very thin and the writer said that he didn’t use the book as inspiration, so I feel like it would mislead the reader like it did me.