Gamble. We understand that our lives are essentially made of chances and choices. Everything is essentially a gamble. Where we are born, where we are brought up, who we love, who we marry, who are born to us, what they want to become, what we want to become, what all of us eventually turn out to be… Everything is a gamble. Interestingly, Others begins with one such gamble. A staged accident that aims to be a highway robbery turns into a massive explosion that kills four, including three women. This is how we are introduced to the world of Others, which does a good job of pulling us right into the narrative. But, unfortunately, the makers do their best in the next 120-odd minutes to keep us at arm’s length and more. 

Director: Abin Hariharan

Cast: Aditya Madhavan, Gouri Kishan, Anju Kurian, Jagan 

Assistant Commissioner Madhav (Aditya Madhavan) is assigned the case, and he moves in and out of places, conducting his fair share of investigation. After the postmortem report provides him with a series of important pointers, Madhav connects seemingly improbable dots, which send him to orphanages across the city to find clues. When asked about the reasoning behind his connecting the case of missing women to orphanages, Madhav simply shrugs and says the elaborate version of, ‘Trust me, bro,’ and from here, the film never really finds redemption. You can’t just call it Madhavan instinct… You are not Raghavan. Nevertheless, this trail leads to an unholy nexus between orphanages, helpless women, ruthless men, and a disturbing ploy that is also dangerous. 

While this case and its investigation would have been compelling threads on their own, the makers decided to include a romantic angle, which also means a romantic song. Oh, and they also think comedy during a serious investigation would be a much-needed break. But why would we need that break in the first place? Why dumb down an investigation by having an investigative officer actually urinate very close to a crime scene? Why make the same officer just utter random one-liners in the aim to bring in a laugh or two at the most inopportune moments? How can an officer miss shooting a criminal who is standing just 3-4 feet away? Why are the officers shown to be increasingly dull, who cannot catch an evil mastermind even if he literally stands right in front of them? 

The film is riddled with so many loopholes that it is not even unintentionally funny after a while. Case in point, the police arrest the assistant of the mastermind, and are using third-degree torture to get information. Why would you be recording the torture when the camera is clearly placed for recording the confession? Why would you not check the phone records the moment you have his phone? Why wait for something untoward to happen to him before even opening his phone? Isn’t it the most basic of things? And the convenient use of technology reminded me of the scene from Tamizh Padam 2 where Shiva asks a fellow police officer if he can throw sand into the petrol tank of a bike they have been following from the control room. Since the investigation procedures of Madhav are flimsy and ungrounded from the start, we don’t rally behind him. Also, the convenience extends to his fiancée, Madhu (Gouri Kishan), who is an IVF specialist, and she is conveniently connected to the case that he has been investigating. However, this is the only convenience that seems alright, especially since Gouri dials up the earnestness and sensitivity in a film that is content with going through the motions. 

As long as the film was convenient, inconsequential, and unintentionally funny, Others was just harmless and simply existed to be a decent launchpad for newcomer Aditya. But then, director Abin Hariharan had other plans. And we get to the final act where everything unravels, and we are introduced to the actual plot of the film… the reasoning behind the death in the beginning, and complicated births during IVF procedures conducted across the city. Although the filmmaker shouts from the rooftops that he has noble intentions, it doesn’t necessarily come through in the film. What it does is antagonise an oppressed community that needed better representation. Of course, creative liberty is in play, and the intentions might still have been for proper representation, but the execution matters more. Others falters big time here. 

The antagonist, despite his nefarious intentions, is painted as someone who also needs society’s care and concern. While that might still be okay considering how we’ve had films like Mysskin’s Psycho that asked the audience to treat a serial killer with empathetic gloves, Others doesn’t have the finesse to paint a promising picture. Instead, the character is played like a caricature, and it is grating to a fault. Every scene involving the character plays out like an amateurishly staged and enacted one-act play that is also super regressive. And even here, the investigation is convenient and boring, and the hero jumps through emotional hoops without even acknowledging it, let alone reacting to them. That is why when the finale asks us to introspect and empathise, it feels like a hollow call for action rather than a heartfelt plea for change. 

The film also uses scare-mongering tactics to put forth its point, and in a society that is still coming to terms with a lot of scientific advancements, it can be quite a dangerous precedent. With scientific temper not necessarily at an all-time high, such a flippant approach takes away from the gravity of the issue at hand. What could have been a deeper exploration of society’s apathy ends up creating a sense of distrust. These issues notwithstanding, the film itself faces trouble with a choppy narrative that never allows us to immerse ourselves in the film. 

While Ghibran tries his best to inject much-needed freshness and intrigue into the proceedings, the writing does him a great disservice. The same holds good for the performances in the film, as most of the characters are so underwritten that trying to sell them as deep and layered is laughable at best. Apart from focus and finesse, Others also needed a fair share of restraint because it is so all over the place that it takes away even the slightest of goodwill the film generated till the final act decides to derail everything. 

It is almost like the film had just one ace up its sleeve, and it plays its cards too close to its chest for so long that when the ace finally comes to play, the casino has been shut for good, and everyone cuts their losses with no real winners… including the house.