‘Nizhal’ movie review: Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper

Nayanthara and Kunchako Boban star in this moody, atmospheric thriller that unravels towards the finish

Managing to build up the anticipation and to keep the audience guessing until the time of the scriptwriter’s choosing would mean half the job done in constructing an effective thriller. But much of the other half rests on how potent that final reveal is. Imagine the feeling when you expect a lion to walk out of a cave, after listening to its majestic roars for some time... and you see a mouse crawling out instead! In ‘Nizhal’, in the end, after much anticipation, we get to see something much better than a mouse, but something less than a lion too. . Judicial magistrate John Baby (Kunchako Boban) is recovering from an accident that has left him with a post-traumatic stress disorder. During consultations with his clinical psychologist friend Shalini (Divya Prabha), she tells him about the case of school student Nithin (Izin Hash), who had narrated a disturbing story in the class, which seemed all too real, but the source of which remained mysterious. The boy’s over-protective mother Sharmila (Nayanthara) is initially reluctant at the idea of digging deeper into this, but soon she joins John in trying to unravel the mystery.