Shahad Nilambur on Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar loopholes

Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar director Shahad Nilambur says the "loopholes" viewers point out are already explained in the film. The Parvathy Thiruvothu thriller has drawn fresh debate since it began streaming on Netflix.

He made the case in a recent interview. His remarks below are from that conversation.

Shahad Nilambur expected the OTT questions

Shahad says he saw the criticism coming once the film reached streaming. In his view, most of the questions viewers raise are answered on screen.

He admits one miscalculation. He and writer S Subramaniam, a serving police officer, chose not to spell out certain turns. Audiences often say they hate being spoon-fed, he notes, but this time the team misjudged how much detail people wanted.

He also defends two specific choices. The ballistics scene gathers the key characters in one place to keep the plot moving. And a senior officer like DySP Navas Meeran, played by Vijayaraghavan, can publish a book on his cases with police permission.

Not a documentary, he says

Shahad calls the film fiction with creative liberties. The core thread drew on a case involving a police officer in the US, but the rest is invented for drama.

He welcomes the comparisons with Jeethu Joseph's Drishyam and sees them as a compliment. On a sequel, his answer is "not at the moment", though the open questions at the end mean he will not rule it out.

Why the debate matters

Streaming tends to change how a thriller is watched. Viewers can pause, rewind and screenshot a scene, so small gaps that pass in a theatre get picked apart online. That is the shift Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar is going through now.

It is also a step up for Shahad. His earlier film was the romance Anuragam, and this is his first investigative thriller.

Parvathy plays Aleena Abraham, a civil police officer who joins the force after her husband dies on duty. A murder case at her station soon puts her own colleagues under suspicion.