'Thudakkam' Movie Review: A Middling Action-Based Message Movie  

In the interviews leading up to the release of Vismaya Mohanlal’s Thudakkam, it’s writer-director Jude Anthany Joseph spoke about how the basic concept of the film had been in discussion, as far back as 2020. There’s been a whole host of similar films that have released since, but there’s no denying the film’s obvious lack of sheen because it has hit screens after all of those films have released. In terms of its messaging alone, Darshana Rajendran’s Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaye Hey comes to mind, with recent releases such as Blast in Tamil and Maa Inti Bangaaram adding to an unignorable feeling of déjà vu. In first viewing, Thudakkam also feels like the most dated of these films, relying on a gratingly obvious amount of self-seriousness, as though it’s the first ever film to say what it’s trying to. 

But what Thudakkam tries differently is how it mixes two broad sub-genres to tell one story about women empowerment. If the first half is designed like a stalker movie with an investigation of a missing person forced into it, the second half is broadly a home-invasion action movie. The fact that it feels like a carefully calculated launch vehicle for a superstar’s daughter, only dilutes the film further to take away the veracity of its message. In one sequence, Mohanlal plays an exaggerated version of himself to motivate Meenu (Vismaya Mohanlal), after feeling let down by a horrific incident. After a minute, his speech decidedly blurs the line between fact and fiction, and we suddenly feel like we’re listening in on a father speaking directly to his daughter. There are hollow words like “freezing point”, “finishing point” thrown in to make it sound legit, but the entire sequence feels too artificial and too calculative to add to the film’s organic flow. 

But this feels like just one of the factors that removes you from Thudakkam’s intended intensity. The world and the characters it creates in small-town Idukki feel too prosaic to be taken seriously. The homes at this hill station look like movie sets and an entire sub-plot involving Meenu and her deceased mother’s cassettes, look jarringly sentimental. And then you get multiple conflicts that feel downright silly.

The most obvious of these is the one involving a character played by Ganesh Kumar. He’s upset because Meenu’s father’s intervention has halted his business plans, but right from the minute this character enters the film, it becomes clear as day that he’s meant to be a red herring. Another conflict involves Meenu’s martial arts practice, losing out on students after she loses a fight. When you add to the seedy layer of a police officer, slut shaming Meenu after the same incident and it looks like the film’s throwing too much at us, just to underline the larger point about women in our society. 

The film constantly breaks the fourth wall to make obvious statements, and it becomes clear that all of these have been rewritten to make the film appear softer for the lucrative family audience. But if there’s any redeeming factor in the film, it has to be the action scenes. It appears to be tailor-made for the Muay Thai-trained Vismaya Mohanlal and Ashish Joe Anthony, who makes a compelling case for an instantly eerie presence as the villain.

It is here that the film finally feels like a product of 2026 and the climatic action sequences between these characters is among the coolest in all of Malayalam cinema this year. This might feel like precious little after what feels like a long wait, but it deceives you to think you’ve watched a fun film. Just like how the sequences of parkour made Pranav Mohanlal’s Aadi feel like a passable fare, it’s the action blocks in Thudakkam that let you look past its hollowness to call it the bare minimum.