Drones
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
Plot
Drones begins with a simple, strange question: what if the bizarre things that happen only in dreams started happening in real life? A group of friends finds itself drawn into a mysterious house where reality bends, and a witch who was mistaken for an angel holds the key to their escape.
Around them moves a surreal cast of characters: a mad scientist, a detective, an angel and a witch, all connected by a dollhouse filled with trapped souls. The film follows the friends as they try to understand the rules of this world and find their way out of it.
The dollhouse at the story’s centre is a striking image. It turns a child’s toy into a prison, and the film uses that image to ask what it means to be watched, kept and controlled by forces we cannot see.
Performance
Siddhi Idnani leads the film with charm, playing the angel at the centre of the mystery with a calm, otherworldly presence. Anjali Nair, Dravid Selvam and RJ Deepak play the friends with an easy, natural chemistry that keeps the film grounded.
Devadarshini is a standout as the witch, taking on a character unlike anything she has played before, and she commits to it fully. Cinemawala Sathish is solid as the police officer, and Kuraishi brings humour to the mad scientist.
Dravid Selvam brings a natural, comedic ease to the group. His background in comedy shows, and his reactions ground the film’s stranger moments in something recognisable.
Screenplay and Direction
Raghav Mirdath, who made his name with the comedy Bun Butter Jam, directs with a clear love for the surreal. The premise is genuinely original for Tamil cinema, and the film’s world, a house where dreams leak into reality, is full of striking images.
The execution does not always keep up with the idea. The screenplay meanders, and a stronger structure would have made the mystery more gripping. Still, the film’s imagination is real, and its best moments are memorably odd.
Mirdath’s visual imagination is the film’s greatest asset. The house, the forest and the dream logic are all rendered with a confidence that suggests a director with a strong visual sense.
Music
Hari S R’s music supports the film’s dreamlike mood, drawing attention at key moments without overwhelming the mystery. The score leans into the eerie and the playful by turns, matching the film’s shifting tone.
The music is not the film’s main attraction, but it does its job quietly, helping the surreal world feel cohesive rather than random.
The sound design also deserves mention alongside the music. Strange, echoing sounds give the house its personality, and the film’s world feels more complete because of them.
Themes
Beneath the fantasy, Drones is about how we mistake danger for kindness. The friends trust the wrong person because she looks like an angel, and the film plays that mistake for both comedy and horror.
It is also about friendship under pressure: when reality stops making sense, the only reliable thing is the people beside you. That simple idea keeps the film warm even at its strangest.
The film also plays with the idea of dreams as warnings. What the friends dismiss as nonsense turns out to be the truth, and the film suggests we should pay more attention to what frightens us.
Conclusion
Drones is an interesting idea in search of a tighter film. Its world is inventive, its cast is game, and its premise is unlike anything else in Tamil cinemas right now.
If you enjoy fantasy horror that takes risks, even imperfect ones, Drones is worth a watch. It is a film you will keep thinking about, if only to puzzle over its stranger corners.
Drones is currently in theatres, where its strange, dreamlike world works best on the big screen. It is a film for viewers who enjoy a wild idea, even when the execution is uneven.
What Drones proves is that Tamil cinema still has room for genuine strangeness. Its dream logic, its dollhouse and its witch are not borrowed from any template, and even when the film loses its way, its imagination never flags. That originality deserves encouragement, because a film industry that only repeats what worked last year will eventually run out of stories. Drones may be imperfect, but it is the kind of imperfect that points somewhere new, and that makes it more interesting than many safer, smoother films.
Drones is uneven, but it is never boring, and its originality counts for a lot. For viewers tired of formula, it offers a strange and memorable alternative.