Nishabdham review: This Anushka Shetty-starrer is excruciatingly boring

Hemant Madhukar’s Nishabdham opens in a haunted villa where two characters are killed and nobody knows who is responsible.

Ideally, this scene should have scared the living daylights out of the viewer and set the mood for the film. Unfortunately, it’s one of the blandest opening scenes ever, making little to no impact.

Many years later, Antony (R Madhavan), a renowned musician, and his fiancee Sakshi (Anushka Shetty), a hearing-and-speech-impaired artist, visit the same villa in search of a special painting. However, something terrible happens, and what follows forms the crux of the story.

The film is, bafflingly, shot entirely in Seattle, USA, and all the actors seem terribly out of place. Hollywood actor Michael Madsen plays a key role but for some reason the makers have got someone else to dub his lines in English. Madsen, who is popular for his association with Quentin Tarantino, is badly miscast here and leaves you scratching your head.

Nishabdham is one of those films where every cast member, regardless of their repertoire, competes with everyone else to deliver the most disappointing performance. Shetty was supposed to do the heavy lifting in this project, but hers is a character that evokes utter indifference. Worse, the actress doesn't lift a finger to make the horribly written role slightly interesting.

Madhavan, usually impeccable in his choice of characters, comes across as another major casting blooper and ends up making a mockery of his character. Anjali's is the sole character that makes any impact, but it's a downer when she mouths some of her English dialogues.

At one point, Sakshi sets out to avenge the death of an important character, but as a viewer you are left with very little sympathy for both characters.

Nishabdham is a colossal mess and there are no two ways about it. Despite the presence of a talented lead pair, the film is excruciatingly boring and lacks the thrills to keep one invested in the story and its characters. Every frame of the film reeks of artifice and one fails to understand why it was shot in Seattle in the first place. Neither the locations nor the foreign characters justify the makers’ intent to shoot the entire film in the United States. Of course, setting it in India would have had the same impact, courtesy of the lousy writing, but it would have at least saved the makers a good deal of money.

Amazon Prime Video is now streaming Nishabdham in Telugu and Tamil.