Drones (2026) Review: Tamil Cinema's Wild Genre Hybrid

Here's the setup, and I promise I'm not making any of this up. A student walks through life in a sleepwalking haze. A miniature artist shows up with secrets stitched into every tiny brushstroke. There's an ancient witch lurking somewhere in the mix, a dollhouse that happens to be a prison for trapped souls, and a police officer carrying a love curse like a bad tattoo. Somehow, all of these threads are supposed to braid together into one narrative. Yeah, good luck with that. And yet, Drones commits hard to its own chaos. The dollhouse, in particular, is a gorgeous little nightmare box - the film's most striking visual idea, and easily its creepiest. Trapped souls in miniature furniture is the kind of image that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

Directed by Raghav Mirdath, Drones feels less like a movie and more like a DJ set where every track is a different genre and the DJ refuses to let any of them finish. One minute it's a quirky romance, the next it's slapstick comedy, then a haunted-house horror beat, and somehow it lands on fantasy. The tonal whiplash is real. Your brain will get whiplash, then ask for a neck brace, then admit it had fun anyway.

Siddhi Idnani anchors the sleepwalking-student thread with a performance that's appropriately dreamy and hard to pin down. Dravid Selvam's Kish has an easy, likeable energy that keeps the comedy from tipping into farce. Anjali Nair brings real presence as Rush, and KPY Kuraishi's Mad Scientist is exactly as unhinged as a character named "The Mad Scientist" deserves to be. The supporting cast - Devadarshini, Cinemawala Sathish as Koomapatti Madhavan, Sassi Selvaraj as Cerlac Homes, RJ Deepak - rounds out the ensemble with enough quirks to fill three other movies.

Where Drones stumbles is in its refusal to slow down. It sprints through plot threads the way a sleepwalker stumbles through a hallway - bumping into things, occasionally brilliant, frequently disorienting. The dollhouse of trapped souls deserves an entire film, not a subplot. The love-cursed cop is a premise that could carry its own franchise. Instead, they're all crammed into one runtime, competing for oxygen. The result is a film that's more interesting in theory than in its final assembly, but it never pretends to be tidy. There's real directorial confidence here - Mirdath clearly has a vision, even if the vision keeps changing its mind.

The rating on TMDb sits at a flat 0/10 as of today, which is less a reflection of quality and more a sign that literally nobody has voted yet. Release day is today, so the score is meaningless. Ignore it. Judge Drones for what it is: an overstuffed, uneven, occasionally dazzling swing for the surreal.

Pros

• Wildly original premise that refuses to play it safe
• The dollhouse of trapped souls is an all-timer horror visual
• KPY Kuraishi's Mad Scientist is a chaotic delight
• Genre-hopping keeps you guessing, never bored

Cons

• Too many plot threads competing for too little time
• Tonal shifts can leave you dizzy rather than dazzled
• Some characters deserve deeper exploration than they get
• The storytelling can feel as sleepwalking as its lead

Drones is the kind of movie that makes you wish there were more movies like it, even while you're wishing it had been edited within an inch of its life. It's a bold, strange, deeply imperfect swing from Raghav Mirdath - and in a landscape where so much plays it safe, a swing like this is worth the ticket even when it misses. If you're the kind of viewer who loves a film for its ideas more than its execution, this one's for you. If you need your stories clean, coherent, and tied with a bow, maybe sit this one out. Either way, you won't forget the dollhouse anytime soon.