Valathu Vashathe Kallan Review: Jeethu Joseph’s Latest Is Careful, Cold, And Curiously Distant
For a filmmaker whose reputation was built on making audiences lean forward, Valathu Vashathe Kallan is a strangely distant experience. It asks for attention, but rarely rewards it with discovery.
Jeethu Joseph is a director still living in the long shadow of Drishyam. Every new film arrives burdened with expectations of cleverness, moral play, and narrative control. After Mirage, which tested the audience’s patience with excess twists and thinning credibility, Valathu Vashathe Kallan feels like a deliberate course correction which is quieter, more restrained and less eager to surprise. Unfortunately, restraint alone cannot compensate for a lack of depth.
The film sets up a confrontation between a corrupt police officer, CI Antony Xavier, and parents searching for their missing daughter.Antony is introduced as morally bankrupt from the very first scene, leaving no room for ambiguity or psychological tension. Biju Menon plays the role with discipline, but the writing denies him complexity.
Samuel (Joju George), as the father driven into action by mistrust and desperation brings the film its strongest emotional presence.Lena, too, lends sincerity in limited space. Yet even here, the screenplay seems more interested in what these characters do than in what they feel.
As the film progresses, Valathu Vashathe Kallan increasingly reveals its priorities. Instead of allowing emotional pressure to shape the story, it leans into contrivance, puzzles, timed movements, orchestrated coincidences. What should feel like desperation plays out as design. The second half unfolds with a suspicious neatness, where plans fall into place too easily and obstacles exist only to be cleared. The tension is manufactured, not organic.
The film’s most uncomfortable flaw lies in its repeated use of violence against women as narrative shorthand. These moments are deployed to establish villainy or escalate stakes, then swiftly moved past. The women affected are rarely allowed interior lives; their suffering exists largely to push male characters toward transformation or vengeance. This pattern has appeared in several of Jeethu Joseph’s films, and here it feels particularly thoughtless.
Technically, the film is functional but uninspired.The background score underlines scenes without enhancing them. Several supporting performances falter, exposing the fragility of the dialogue and the lack of tonal control in key moments.
What ultimately weighs Valathu Vashathe Kallan down is its fear of mess. The film wants to be seen as intelligent, but it equates intelligence with control over characters, over plot, over audience response. There is little room for moral ambiguity, emotional contradiction, or lingering discomfort. Everything is explained, justified, and resolved.
I think, Jeethu Joseph’s problem today isn’t that audiences expect another Drishyam, but that his recent films seem unsure of what they want to be without that benchmark. Valathu Vashathe Kallan is not terrible, but it is telling a film that looks serious, sounds serious, and yet leaves little behind once the pieces fall into place.
For a director once trusted to challenge his audience’s intelligence, this feels like a work that underestimates their emotional patience instead.
