Suzhal - The Vortex Review: Investigative thrillers, if correctly done, have a way of getting the audience involved in the fact-finding exercise. But personally speaking, I have very rarely found a decent and invigorating content in Indian OTT genre. Most of them tend to follow the same cliched way of execution making them too predictable. While Suzhal - The Vortex builds the narrative well without being gimmicky, the end doesn't justify the means. Suzhal The Vortex: Here’s a Look at Five Reasons on Why To Watch Kathir, Aishwarya Rajesh and R Parthiban’s Amazon Prime Video Series!.

A small town in South India celebrating a local festival of a powerful Goddess is left shocked when a factory is burnt down and the daughter of the union leader Shanmugam (Radhakrishnan Parthiban), Nila (Gopika Ramesh) goes missing, all in one night. While cops Regina (Shreya Reddy) and her subordinate Sakkarai (Kathir) are entrusted with the case, Nila's sister Nandhini (Aishwarya Rajesh) decides to investigate as well. Soon they realise Nila eloped with Regina's son Adhisayam (Fredrick John). What looked like a simple case of a missing person turns sinister when secrets tumble out stunning everyone in town.

Gayathri and Pushkar, the writers of the series, did a good job in piecing the  narrative together. The first three episodes will make you feel it's yet another predictable thriller but you know it's an eight-episode series, so there's more to it. The way these two people peel off the different layers of the story and reveal the secrets, you will be shocked. Although you might expect a sudden change in narrative, you will never see what's coming.

The execution is somewhere between slow-burn and racy which works perfectly with the events. The director doesn't try to heighten tension by pointless drama or long winding clue finding process. It's a small town and the investigation benefits from how much people know about each other in such locations.

But it isn't without its flaws. In a bid to create intrigue and confusion for viewers, the writers shot off in all directions. They packed so many side stories in the narrative that it got quite tiring after a while. A missing girl from the past, stalking, kidnapping, cult worship, human sacrifice, sexual abuse and much more. In fact, the ending completely runs down the fantastic story buildup. All of a sudden, it becomes a statement for sexual abuse and how it rips apart a girl's life. It didn't need a moral of the story, at least the story wasn't treated the way to arrive at one.

Also, a few questions stay unanswered. After Sakkarai chases and pulls up the Councillor for running away with his son, nobody bothers to ask where were they off to. As long as, they heard the story, they didn't care. The mental breakdown of Nandhini seems more like an afterthought. It just suddenly appears in the last two episodes and that too quite conveniently. The main purpose was to create a thread that can lead to the end. The whole Sakkarai his fiance Lakshmi and Nandini love triangle is completely unnecessary. Fortunately, the writers don't dwell too much into that.

Watch the trailer of Suzhal - The Vortex here

Performances are decent. Kathir makes you wish all cops are that fit and nimble-footed. Aishwarya Rajesh is fine but it isn't anything that we haven't seen before. Shreya Reddy probably would have left a bigger mark on our minds if she was allowed to do more than just frown and get angry. Suzhal – The Vortex: Hrithik Roshan, Dulquer Salmaan, Keerthy Suresh Laud the Trailer of the Amazon’s Thriller Show.

Yay!

- fab build-up

-great twists

Nay!

- too many subplots

-the common thread is confusing

-underwhelming ending

Final Thoughts:

Suzhal- The Vortex could have been a deeply satisfying thriller had it stayed loyal to its build-up. The damp squib of an ending mires the entire experience. Suzhal -The Vortex streams on Amazon Prime.

Rating:2.5

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 17, 2022 02:00 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).