Drishyam 2

I have never seen Drishyam or any of its remakes (not properly, at least) before I watched Drishyam 2. Instead, I sat down half an hour before watching Drishyam 2 and watched Drishyam on fast-forward. (I was willing to do anything except read the plot summary on Wikipedia.) What did I understand from it? Absolutely nothing, because I don't understand Malayalam, and there were no captions. I did, however, get a general gist of "There's Mohanlal 'n' family, someone might have killed someone, and someone buried someone somewhere." I ended up watching Drishyam 2 with my dad, who saw the Telugu remake of Drishyam, so he filled me in when I was lost. By the end, I found myself making my own theories about what would happen next and how the remake and sequel of it might be.

Drishyam 2 opens with Jose, who's on the run after killing his brother-in-law. He is shown to have witnessed Georgekutty coming out of the construction site of the Police Station. Then, the story moves forward six years, to 2020, where we see Georgekutty and his family living a happy life. Georgekutty now owns a theater and is working with a screenwriter to write a screenplay. Besides constant paranoia, the only remnant of the murder and its aftermath is Anju, the elder daughter in the family who is affected by PTSD and has fits of epilepsy because of the incident.

This movie was unlike any other thriller I have seen before. The first half is almost a family drama. It hides the element of suspense in the fabric of the family's current issues: Georgekutty is working on producing his movie, Rani is concerned about Anju's health and Georgekutty's drinking problem, along with the murder from six years ago, and Anu wants to have a normal sleepover with her friends. All of these seem like common family drama elements, but when the movie shifts into a crime drama, we see how smartly all of these are used to build suspense. Each twist seemed unique and fresh. I never would have imagined that Georgekutty's screenplay would be published as a book (named Drishyam), which would later save him in court. The ending, though, was an absolute jab to the heart—Georgekutty had to live with constant paranoia and guilt (a life sentence). It was the most realistic ending I've seen for a thriller in recent times, and it leaves you with the question: How far would you go for your family?