Writer director duo Akhil Paul and Anas Khan reunite with Tovino Thomas following the 2020 hit Forensic for a new thriller, Identity (2025), also starring Trisha Krishnan in the lead.
Thomas plays Haran, who suffers from OCD due to a traumatic childhood. He demonstrates great sketching skills, something picked up from his late mother, a police sketch artist. This skill is particularly useful when policeman Allen (Vinay Rai) moves into the neighbouring apartment with Alisha (Trisha Krishnan), an eye witness to a murder, who has a photographic memory, who will be able to describe the killer to Haran. But is everything as it seems, or is there more than meets the eye?
Identity gets it’s core spot on – for an investigative thriller, you need to be invested in the main storyline, and that is definitely the case here. The film doesn’t over complicate things, but there are times when you feel that some of the twists have been included just to be able to pull the rug from under the audiences’ feet.
Identity rests on the strong performances of the lead duo of Tovino Thomas, Vinay Rai and Trisha Krishnan. Once you can get over the minor lip sync issues with Trisha’s dubbing (who, unfortunately doesn’t have that much to do), the film, for the most part, is enjoyable and engaging. There are enough meat in the story to keep you interested in the movie, but it must be said, Identity doesn’t quite become another shining example of the high standards adapted by recent Malayalam movies, such as Manjummel Boys (2024), Aattam (2024) and Aadujeevitham (2024).
That said, Identity is worth a watch, particularly for the lead performance of Tovino Thomas, who is going from strength to strength with every movie.
Written by Bhaskar Choudhury
