Last Updated:February 28, 2025, 19:35 IST

Aadhi and Arivazhagan’s best work remains to be Eeram despite giving their all to Sabdham, which lacks the clarity and simplicity of their first collaboration.

Sabdham movie review: Director Arivazhagan’s latest horror thriller struggles under the weight of excessive ideas.

Sabdham Movie Review:A problem with magnum opuses is the weight of the expectations it creates for future projects from the filmmaker. Eeram continues to be a victory director Arivazhagan is unable to emulate. Sabdham is the second collaboration with Aadhi, which has brought the hit duo back again, but not the quality it had produced with Eeram. Though Sabdham is an unabashed attempt at creating a horror film of a similar pedigree, Arivazhagan falls short due to the lack of simplicity that Eeram wore as a crown. Eeram, his debut, was a straightforward story about the ghost of a virtuous woman haunting everyone who wronged her, using water as her medium. When the protagonist investigates the case, it takes an organic route to move from being a crime thriller to a horror. Everything about the film was lucid and engaging as the film doesn’t take too much on its shoulders. On the other hand, Sabdham (meaning sound) is confusing as it tries to marry science with the supernatural.

Sabdham begins on a great and measured note. Two back-to-back suicides in a medical college in Munnar spark rumours of a supernatural entity in the institution. To nip it in the bud, the management decides to hire a ghost investigator, Ruben (Arivazhagan) and gives him a deadline to figure out if their college is haunted. Ruben approaches the deaths as crimes and says, “If the need arises, I will become a paranormal investigator.” The idea is to keep the question of the supernatural alive. It worked well in Eeram as Aadhi played a conventional cop, but here, the film leaves no space for such debates.

The biggest issue with Sabdham is its incessant need to logically justify the supernatural, something our horror films should stop. Isn’t buying a ticket to one, the evidence of our willing suspension of disbelief? While one would expect logic for what’s happening inside the universe of a horror film, an explanation for the horror itself is absurd, which Sabdham tries a lot. However, what becomes illogical about the film is its science, which comes across as sorcery. It also has black magic, but after a point, one can’t tell logic from magic in Sabdham. Then there is the flashback towards the third act that breaks down everything conveniently, making up the cliched structure that has become the norm.

The technical brilliance of Sabdham is resounding. The sound design of the horror sequence reveals immense dedication. The interval sequence is perhaps the boldest and most experimental attempt in Tamil horror and that alone warrants a watch. Thaman, the composer, on his part, has come up with a befitting score for such sequences. Yet, such streaks of brilliance are shockingly absent in the story, which is confusing to say the least. Sabdham, just as a story about a supernatural presence in a college, is good enough for a horror film, when such technical sophistication is in your arsenal. Yet, the bombardment of too many ideas has rendered Sabdham a cacophony, when it had the potential to be music.