There is a lot going on here that I really like, but that it never goes anywhere and ends up collapsing into a lackluster finale is truly heartbreaking. This may have been a result of “Odiyan” wanting to be two kinds of films, on one end it wants to be a deeply moving and mysterious character driven drama and on the other end it wants to be some action packed horror film. That it tries to be both is a shame, and as a result it is becomes overlong and unfocused. I suspect there will be different aspects of the film that people will enjoy but I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who will wholly enjoy it.
For me, I really enjoyed the folk-tale mysterious aspect of the film, the idea of not knowing what exactly Odiyan (Mohanlal) is, or what he is doing, was something I didn’t expect this film to do going in. The use of darkness and mythology as a metaphor for evil, ignorance and fear. There are undeniably some spectacular scenes in the film, spectacular ideas and themes. I loved the whole training sequence between Odiyan and his grandfather; it just added to the mystery that you, and the people in the film, were trying to figure out. Is Odiyan really a shape-shifter or is he just wearing a mask? That the film answers this question too quickly is one of it’s shortcomings but nevertheless this aspect gets replaced with another interesting story of an innocent man being convicted as a murderer. In this aspect of the film we are introduced to Prabha (Manju Warrier), Meenakshi (Sana Altaf) and Nair (Prakash Raj), all of whom are good characters that could have been done a lot with. But the film never goes anywhere with their story.
The last 3rd of this film is extremely disappointing, none of the ideas presented before it are ever taken to completion and you’re just left wondering what it was all for? By far the worst aspect of the movie is it’s insistence on being an action film. I found most of the action sequences, including the final one, childish and unnecessary. There isn’t much tension in any of them, nor do any of them look particularly good. Much more haunting was the fear of the characters walking through the dark thinking Odiyan was around the corner, the sound of a bat or a shadow frightening them to the ground; just like them you didn’t know what was going to happen, like them you felt the mystery of the night that Odiyan uses to build his image. Again, it’s a shame that the movie every now and then looses focus of this and delves into transient action sequences, which aren’t that interesting in the first place.
That being said, the acting, the cinematography and music are all very good. They all plunge us into a time before electricity, when the fear of stories and darkness were real and exploited by both the good and bad. This movie really had something going for it, and even with it’s occasional lapse into a dreary action film, I glimpsed something magical every now and then. That it delves into a pointless 3rd half is undeniable but so is the allure of the image of a grandfather chasing around his grandson with bull horns, taking the fear out of him, or the sound of that ominous Odiyan track, or the stories of the wonderful characters that color the scene. It just would have all been better, more worthwhile, had it gone somewhere with all of it.
