The film marks the directorial debut of cinematographer Tanu Balak. With a formal announcement made in September 2020, the principal shooting of the film began on 31 October, and was completed on 7 December 2020. It was filmed mostly in Trivandrum around 36 days. Prakash Alex composed the film score while Gireesh Gangadharan and Jomon T. John jointley handled the cinematography, and Shameer Muhammed edited the film.
Cold Case was released on 30 June 2021 on Amazon Prime Video, bypassing theatrical release due to COVID-19-related cinema closures. Being the maiden digital release for Prithviraj-starrer, the film opened to mostly mixed reviews, praising the storyline and performances of the cast members, but pointed out the weak execution, narration and screenplay.
The movie opens with a Hindu exorcism ritual in Varanasi and a Muslim exorcism ritual in Kerala.
Medha, a journalist leaves her news office while talking to her mother who is at an ashram. While driving home, A.C.P. M. Sathyajith is called in to investigate a murder, as a result of a skull being found in a bag from a river. Forensic analysis reveals that the murder was committed over a year ago and the skull belongs to a female aged 25–30 years. The identity of the deceased is then sought. The dental implants on the skull, indicate that the victim was a female named Eva Maria, who was from a wealthy family and that her father had left her a fortune before his death. The police investigate her location and traces her family. Her stepmother tells him that she had married a North Indian and remained estranged from them for a while and that during the Easter of 2019, her father met her and possibly patched up things between them. The police also learn that all the land that Eva had inherited was quietly sold to an outsider.
On the other hand, Eva's spirit tries to contact Medha, a journalist currently seeking help for her daughter's custody case from Advocate Haritha, who is also a friend of Medha, as Eva's spirit needs Medha's help. Medha takes the help of a psychic cum occult researcher, Zara Zacchai, who tells her the name of the soul as Eva Maria and Medha with the help of Advocate Haritha (who was Eva's lawyer for her divorce case) and Asif, a colleague starts her own investigation in parallel, unaware that the Police are investigating the case.
Sathyajith later meets Eva's ex-husband and finds out that he was deep in debt because of his divorce proceeding as he had to return 2.5 Crore that he had earlier borrowed from Eva to start his own production house. This debt was settled by his now father-in-law who is the owner of the media house where Medha works. Sathyajith traces Eva's last known location to a working women's hostel and through multiple witnesses concludes that she was last seen in September 2019 which is the period of her death. However, her phone was active till April 2020 and her Facebook account showed pictures posted in Varanasi till April 2020. He then traces a list of tourists who due to the lockdown were brought to the home state by a special government bus service. He finds Eva's name in that list and concludes that an imposter was posting pictures and sending messages to her friends so that no one reports her missing. Meanwhile, the dental advisor who helped them with the dental implants on the skull, tells him that sometime back they had recovered a human hand in Tamil Nadu and this possibly could link to this case. On analysis, it is found that the hand belonged to Eva and had strands of hair that might belong to the murderer.
During the investigation, Sathyajith learns that Medha is also in search of the truth. While they are discussing each other's findings, Sathyajith gets a phone call from his uncle who had seen the impersonator for Eva while returning from Varanasi. All the pieces of the puzzle fit into the place and Sathyajith detects that the killer is none other than Advocate Haritha. Haritha was neck-deep in debt when she was handling Eva's case. Her father died when a real estate project was mid-way in construction and she fears if the project is not delivered within a month's period she may be arrested. One day she takes Eva home on the pretext of talking her out of her grief and strangles her to death. Haritha then dismembers Eva's body, stores it in the fridge, and later scatters the pieces. She then creates fake documents assuming Eva's identity and sells off Eva's inheritance and restores her father's business, She takes Eva's phone to Varanasi and posts the pictures on Facebook, after which she throws Eva's phone into the river. She later boards a special government bus service for the trip back to Kerala.
Now alerted, Haritha goes to Medha's home to clean up the evidence. While she was there alone, she sees the same refrigerator that she had used to store Eva's remains and then, Haritha is killed when the refrigerator explodes. In the final scenes, we see Medha saying she was right about her beliefs that the refrigerator was possessed with Eva's soul. Sathyajith tells her that there would always be a conflict between faith and logic, as a police officer he can only rely on logic and terms this incident as an extraordinary accident. Later at Medha's ancestral house, her dead sister's picture breaks into pieces after Medha plays the radio paving the way for a sequel.
The film was initially planned for a direct-to-digital release in December 2020, was later delayed due to post-production difficulties. In the process, the producers later planned for a theatrical release, since theatres were allowed to operate with 50% occupancy, and fixed the date as 4 March 2021. But the film was postponed indefinitely, and producers reinstated the decision to release on over-the-top media service as the functioning of theatres were affected due to the second wave of COVID-19.Anto Joseph officially announced the plans of digital release, with the streaming rights of Cold Case and the Fahadh Faasil-starrer Malik, were sold to Amazon Prime Video.
On 16 June 2021, the makers announced the release date as 30 June 2021, with the teaser of the film being unveiled on the same day.The trailer was later unveiled on 18 June 2021.Cold Case released worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on the midnight 29 June, ahead of the original release, and was made available from streaming in 240 countries.
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