DD Next Level movie review: Santhanam goes full meta in horror comedy spoof, but is it next level enough, bro?

DD Next Level movie plot:

Krishna aka Kissa 47 (Santhanam) is a famous film reviewer on YouTube who, along with his family, gets called for a special movie screening. But once he senses something eerie about the place, he runs away only to realise that his family is already seated for the show. With Kissa 47 getting sucked into the film which has his family members as characters, he must quickly act on his sense and save themselves from the ghosts in the film before the end credits roll, for its all the revenge of a failed filmmaker’s ghost, Hitchcock Irudhayaraj (Selvaraghavan).

DD Next Level movie review:

What is the difference between film criticism and bashing? Can journalists be allowed to trash-talk a film if it turns out to be bad? Would it hit the morale of filmmakers and writers? Does the creator have sole proprietorship of his creations even after it's on a public forum? But what about the moviegoers who put their blood and sweat into buying the tickets? Answers to these questions might take one on a profound path of discussion about creating and selling art, or sometimes, might be too trivial and privileged for a society when part of it is already burdened with a humanitarian crisis. But when you are seated for a film by Santhanam, and it is the fourth part of the Dhilluku Dhuddu franchise, you just let the plot dwell in and take you for a fun ride. DD Next Level aims to be exactly that, but does it deliver it?

When Hitchcock Irudhayaraj turns into a ghost to haunt the critics who make a living through reviewing films, we see the case of Kissa 47 getting pulled into the screen where the story takes place on a cruise and an island (you don’t ask why and how, you just hop on to it). His modest parents and sister (played by Nizhalgal Ravi, Kasthuri Shankar and Yashika Aanand) are no longer his family members but exotic and fashionable fellow cruise travelers who do not recognize him as family. 

His girlfriend (Geetika Tiwary) has turned into a ghost, and there isn’t much for Kissa to understand. But given the genre and the amount of leeway Tamil cinema has to offer to its filmmakers, the change in background score, looking down the screen for subtitles, and not to forget how a mere presence of howling and owls are enough to determine the horror genre, one gets confused if DD Next Level is indeed a self-aware, meta form of communication or a just another spoof comedy that Santhanam began his acting journey with.

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Santhanam carries a swag with his character as Kissa 47. His ‘bro’ is both a suffix and a prefix to every dialogue. He has some laughs coming his way, and there is also a moment when he restricts his supporting character to not cracking a ‘male chauvinist’ joke. But we still have to endure some laugh-less stretches, one including Nizhalgal Ravi’s bathroom antics. And the film too gets far stretched in the second half and climax portions, so that it looks like the writers struggled as much as we do as the audience to finish the movie.

DD Next Level has enough to make a spoof of Tamil cinema as well as its fraternity of journalism, and I am not just talking about making Gautham Vasudev Menon play investigating officer Ragavan who is made to run on the beach to Uyirin Uyire and have feet fetish. For those who may not be familiar with how the press works locally, DD Next Level talks about that too. How gossip mongers are branded as journalists, or fight over who gets to watch the screenings first. But in its communication to itself, Santhanam as reviewer even makes a case on why he would trash a film if it were made good in the first place. Now that is the meta I am talking about because it gives some food for thought to the makers of DD Next Level.

DD Next Level movie verdict:

DD Next Level promises to be a fun ride that does not want to take itself so seriously. The latter part is both the boon and bane of the film. I am thankful that the makers were not invested in telling a serious tale, but a tad bit of effort could have gone in, because comedy is a serious business, bro!