Eyes Review: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Eyes asks you to believe a very silly idea, then rewards you with strong subplots and a standout Idukki Jaffer track. The writing can feel dated and repetitive, but the show is mostly engaging.
Rating: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Platform: SonyLIV
Genre: Crime Thriller
Language: Malayalam
Episodes: 7
Director: Manu Ashokan
Cast: Nikhila Vimal, Kani Kusruti, Idukki Jaffer, Saniya Iyappan
How far do you have to stretch to call a show science fiction? In the case of Eyes, quite a lot. The new Malayalam mini-series on SonyLIV is built around a computer application that a special team uses to stop stalking cases in Kerala.
Think Minority Report meets Black Mirror, but with a treatment that is anything but realistic. Director Manu Ashokan does not wink at the audience, though. He plays the whole thing with surprising faith and conviction, and that is why the series works as well as it does.
The Eyes team has five members: two police officers, a software developer, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist. Their job is to watch a handful of people who are supposedly just one fight away from committing murder. Each episode mostly focuses on a different stalker and their story.
It starts with a starlet being followed by a photographer, then moves on to an alcoholic and his childhood sweetheart, a small-time drug mule and his lover, and the very public marriage of a high-profile IAS officer and his influential wife.
Here is where the pulp comes in. Before the team can watch anyone, the stalker must agree to wear a prescribed smartwatch and take regular blood tests to prove they are following a set of medicines. It sounds extreme, even for a disciplined person, let alone someone with a temper problem.
The show even admits this by showing muscle power being used to push people into signing up. You simply have to switch off your doubts at the door.
It takes a little patience, but once you do, there is real fun in watching the cases unfold and waiting to see how they connect, thanks to the screenplay by Bobby-Sanjay and Anjana Nayar.
As with any anthology-style show, some stories grab you more than others. For many viewers, the best one is the two-episode arc about a young IAS officer named Sajin, played by Dev Mohan, and his wife Shobita, played by Saniya Iyappan.
Most other cases are painted in clear black and white, but this one refuses to let you pick a side. The team feels the same confusion as they try to tell the victim from the wrongdoer. The show also uses the Rashomon style well, replaying the same events through each partner’s eyes.
Still, some storytelling choices let it down. Most episodes follow the same pattern, where a character agrees to dive into a long flashback with very little prompting.
People reveal secrets they have kept for years almost too easily. The dialogue also lacks polish. When it is not working as plain exposition, it sounds like something from a film made fifteen years ago.
A few sequences also feel like detours. A long scene involving the Rorschach test never quite connects to what it says about the characters, and a character mentions a book about Sigmund Freud just because he can. They sound like interesting research notes that did not need to be in the final show.
The good news is that the series becomes fun again once you stop taking it so seriously. A hilariously trashy performance by the actor playing Abhiram, an awkward proposal scene featuring Ayesha, played by Nikhila Vimal, and some predictable twists add to the campy charm.
Then comes the subplot involving Idukki Jaffer, which gives the show a real jolt. The links between different characters start clicking in surprising ways, and you begin to care about the core Eyes team.
In the end, Eyes asks you to accept a very unlikely idea, then backs it up with interesting characters and strong subplots. Even if you do not agree with it on most things, it has a way of sneaking up on you.
If you want something lighter after this, our review of Comrade Kalyan covers Sree Vishnu’s fun but uneven Telugu comedy, and our review of The Social Reckoning looks at Aaron Sorkin’s fast and talky Facebook thriller.
Eyes is now streaming on SonyLIV.