Detective Ujjwalan - "Boogey" Wonderland

 

Detective Ujjwalan

2025, Malayalam

Genre: Comedy Mystery

Directors: Indraneel Gopalakrishnan, Rahul G

Stars: Dhyan Sreenivasan, Siju Wilson, Rony David Raj, Kottayam Nazeer

Mohan's Measure ⭐

It takes a lot for Mollywood to leave me less than impressed, but Detective Ujjwalan has succeeded. The movie starts off being a comical look at life in a small village and turns into a needlessly brutal serial killer murder mystery.

The movie plot revolves around a decent joe named Ujjwalan, who runs a bookstore for mystery novel lovers in his small town.  He also serves as the town's parttime detective, occasionally helping, if not all out replacing, the police in solving mediocre crimes and mysteries.  The film's turning point, and it's failing, happens when all of a sudden, a vicious murder takes place in town, leaving everyone suspect, and calling for special investigators to arrive on scene.  The movie could have retained the charming small-town feel.  Instead, it turns into the hunt for psychopathic serial killer, the humor dropped in favor of ridiculous methods to lure the killer into a trap.

The movie is touted as part of the Weekend Cinematic Universe (WCU), a series of new wave cinema that began with Minnal Murali.  Indeed, it would have been nice if references or characters from this previous film could have been brought in to tie it all in.  One can only wonder at why they did not.

Effective too would have been making the crime less dystopian such that the humor that the movie begins with is retained.  Instead, we are treated to a second half of brutally bloodied bodies, police incompetence, and an illogical set of conclusions leading to an equally ludicrous ending. What makes it all the worse is a soliloquy by the killer about the painful childhood that motivated him to emulate an American serial killer called the "Boogey Man."

It frightens me that the industry that sets the standard for Indian film can fall this low in terms of plot and execution, despite a very good star cast and some worthwhile acting. The folks at the WCU multiverse may want to lighten up on what they've been smoking.  Otherwise, the Boogey Man might throw them into the seemingly endless run of Telugu and Tamil flops.