Devil’s Double Next Level, also known as DD Next Level, is an action horror film in Tamil language that was released on 16 May 2025 and written and directed by S. Prem Anand. It has been directed by Venkat Boyanapalli and Arya, in the name of The Show people and Niharika Entertainment. It stars Santhanam, Selvaraghavan and Gautham Vasudev Menon as primary characters and Nizhalgal Ravi, Kasthuri Shankar as secondary characters.
According to the report of Sacnilk, it was reported to have collected Rs 11.69 crores in the 5th day box office, which is small as compared to its budget which is Rs 20 crores, according to Koimoi. The film can recoup over 50% of its budget and possibly it will come nearer to the budget but it is not a box office hit.
Review
DD Next Level is a highly expressive horror-comedy that flaunts the movie. Directed by Prem Anand, this movie takes a very different route when it takes its characters, YouTube film reviewers, into a celluloid world where boundaries between reels and real are totally lost. It is quite an idea: What would you give to make a critic live his life like the movies he was laughing at? It is a smart metatextual aspect into which this show puts the storytelling.
Santhanam plays Kissa 47, a movie reviewer who has a passion to rap and along with his family is entangled into a ghost, the horror movie world of Hitchcock Irudhayaraj. The early scenes are quick and enjoyable, more so with the exchanges of wit, the self-referencing humour and parodies on famous moments in the evergreen Tamil film scenes. Santhanam is also a proud actor, and in the first half, he acts in accordance to what he is famous with. The support cast of Mottai Rajendran and Gautham Vasudev Menon provide a bit of comic value particularly in their caricatured roles taking the jibe at the film cliches.
The hyper-self-consciousness is the strongest asset of the movie. The characters realize that they are in a movie, and they play along, making dry asides about horror movie tropes, critics and even the very reasoning of movies. That gives the first half of the movie a lot of good energy and humour especially through the witty writing and the weird good gag.
But this energy doesn’t last. The second part is where the movie goes too far into toilet jokes and repetitions, not all of them hit. The laggardness of the momentum is indicated and the horror twist predicted. An effort is also made to add some emotional gravitas to the plot with the help of the family of the main character, however, these gravity scenes are boldly located and merely serve to slow down the fun pace established in the first half of the story.
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The film is not without nice pictures. The haunted theatre, costuming and FX are all handled satisfactorily enough in a mid-budget film. The background music of the film is throbbing and is able to gallop with the chaos in the movie. It is technically sound, but the creativity of its premise, not the turns of its plot, is what makes the movie.
DD Next Level has potential, and it does evoke laughs especially amongst viewers who have seen a decent portion of Tamil movies. It, however, also opens with a lesson: It happens out of the gate that being clever is not sufficient when you can not make that cleverness last to the end. The film is however a promising movie that goes awry in the third act.
To their credit, however, a team that did something different tried it. It may be an enjoyable movie to watch with those who already watch too many movies with ornamental self-referential comedy, however, and still like the style of humour that Santhanam delivers. You can play with your expectations being low, especially during the second half and you may not regret making this ride at the theater.
All in all, DD Next Level is an uneven yet ambitious shot at genre-blending, which is supported by an excellent sense of humor in the first half of the film and a rather inventive premise.
Cast
Its ensemble with DD Next Level is a strange combination of experienced comedians, actors, and real-life movie people, and like that, it is a bit of an experiment involving a very particular meta-horror-comedy.
The Krishnamoorthy alias Kissa 47, is a YouTube film critic who speaks rap. His performance relies much on his staple area of half-rapid-fire comedy, plays, and wordplay, as well as overdramatic comic expressions. And his punchlines did not always go over, and some of his emotional moments appeared to be forced. But in the first half Santhanam performs well due to some good timing jokes and an interesting mention of film critics and YouTubers.
Selvaraghavan as Hitchcock Iruthyar is an outrage, and he has put on the suit with some backing honesty. The director of violent films, in this case, he is depicting a ghost director, who visits a theatre and takes vengeance on his critics. He is a strong man onscreen, and he sells the melodramatic part with the solemnity which gives it the ideal contrast to the humour with which it is surrounded.
Gautham Vasudev Menon as Inspector Raghavan, the parody of his trademark cop characters. His deadpan acting combined with the use of English only dialogue delivery gives it a new dimension of eerie in the scenes with Rajendran. The fact that he plays himself adds to the humour in the movie.
Geethika Tiwary, who plays two roles Aasai Harshini, the girlfriend of Kissa and Jessica, a ghost. She does pretty well, though, both sides, with the proper proportion of doe-eyed romantic and vengeful spirit. She is functional rather than acting.
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There are also dual roles of Nizhalgal Ravi who plays the father of Kissa as an auto driver and ship captain McDonald, and Kasthuri as his mother and as she has a reprisal of her own in the film. Their functions serve as material of slapstick humour. It is worth noting, however, that the conversion of Kasthuri into conservative mom and short-skirted, beer-chugging is a personality that turned heads and garnered laughs.
Yashika Aannand as Devi and Maya is an amalgamation of sex and humour. Her mixture with GVM and deception by ordinary romantic songs provides a slight bit of relief. Rajendran as Veen Pechu Babu manages to give the laughs and those lost in confusion, stunned looks and gibberish. Redin Kingsley, Lollu Sabha Maaran and other a few comedians in the film are similarly brightly featured in crisp jokes here and there.
The actors of the movie, in their majority, plunge into their unkempt roles headlong, yet their performances are not as consistent as they could have been because of poor writing. However, their high intensity performances serve to balance out the hectic, though fun, atmosphere of the film.
Critical Reception
Akshay Kumar of Cinema Express gave the film three stars out of five and praised DD Next Level because of a clever and funny idea: a critic and his family were trapped in a film. They loved the humour that mocked horror genre, particularly the characters of Santhanam and Rajendran. The meta jokes and tributes to the film worked, but the reviewer thought that the story could not find its own momentum when it attempted to be serious. And yet, it was humorous and creative and just a full-fledged entertainment.
Abhinav Subramanian of The Times of India gave the movie two stars out of five and glorified the premise of the movie, but stated that the picture does not make us laugh. They believed that Santhanam mangled up his comedy, that it overly used toilet jokes and the format was hackneyed, all meta this and meta that. In spite of Rajendran and Gautham Menon offering some comic relief, there was lack of energy and punch in the movie. The humour was not only banal, but it was plain and so uninspiring, despite a few decent visuals.
Janani K of Indian Today gave the film two out of the total five stars and liked the new idea and comic timing of Santhanam and the way the film is a spoot of film critics in the first half of DD Next Level. Their reactions were to concept layers, of horror, and comedy and meta humour. However, they believed that the second part marred the atmosphere with terrible jokes and toilet humour. Generally, they perceived that the film was fine up to the break, and thereafter nothing.
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Latha Srinivasan of the Hindustan Times gave the film one (out of five) stars and praised the previous hits of Santhanam with the comedy genre and the new idea of spoofing reviewers of the movie, but said that DD Next Level failed. When a strange notion struck them, and the film started to mix haphazard horror with comedy to no purpose, they had lost their path. It was a shallow script that was not funny at all considering the caliber of cast. The reviewer termed it as squandered potential and such a hard watch with barely any jokes.
Audiences Views
The audience rated the DD Next Level as decent-bad with almost 2K people rating the movie at 5.1 stars out of 10 stars on IMDb which is a decent-bad rating. However, it received 4.1 stars out of 5 by more than 200 users on Google, which is good rating. Having read through user reviews, I understood that next level DD received mixed reviews among family audiences and those who liked Santhanam as a performer, and some of the viewers were disappointed at the lack of connection between stories and the reuse of the same jokes.
The majority of the viewers praised the movie as an innovative one; a horror comedy based on a film critic being caught in a film. The meta approach of the narrative was popular with the fans, as was the use of the film within a film and flashbacks, and parallel character development. A lot of them dubbed the movie as a laugh riot especially to children and family viewers and not to include vulgarity and body-shaming jokes. Santhanam was also admired about his ideal comic timing and appearance, with Mottai Rajendran being quoted by many of them as a highlight.
Only a few users were amused and even amused the good use of slapstick and sarcasm and said that it has a few funny stretches, especially in the first half. The intelligent pointers to the cinema and critics and the parodies of the known faces such Gautham Menon were good enough to the movie maniacs.
However, some users did not feel that the second half was resonating. They also criticized the script as becoming too repetitious and over-reliant on low-brow comedy like the fart jokes. There were also those who were confused as to the plot and were not satisfied with the ending. Other users quoted the jokes as being too repetitive and watered down in effect, and that the repetition of bro used by Santhanam was excessive, annoying, and the plot was not exploited to its fullest potential.
However, to the majority it appeared like a huge stress reliever especially in the Tamil film industry that is currently overwhelmed with thrillers. It was an amusing film to the people who were seeking a clean and casual comedy though not everybody felt that it was as good as the former Dhilluku Dhuddu films. Essentially, DD Next Level is probably a well-meaning, entry-level, one-off family entertainer that is cheaper than a theatrical ticket and does not have extensive requirements.
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Songs
Not in size, but in volume, the DD Next Level soundtrack is exactly the right composition that combines the established modern music trends with the unorthodox horror-comedy sounds that appear in the movie. The music is heavily tied to the story and the characters inside, with just two songs in the entire album, most of which are the ramblings of the mad genius of our hero, Kissa 47, a film critic on YouTube.
Title song “Kissa 47” is an introduction to the character of Krishna alias Kissa 47, an actor in the movie performed by Santhanam. It is sung by a rapper and a musician OfRo who mixes indie hip-hop with mainstream film allusions. Kelithee writes sharp as a tack and with an attitude and a social commentary that is appropriate to Kissa as a rebellious, review basher YouTuber.
Having clear beats and being trap-infused and modern, the song is also reflective of the self-aware, meta nature of the movie. The audience commended the soundtrack especially in one couple of user reviews, in which one of the songs received particular attention, finding it appropriate to the story, and the first act appearing peppy.
Cinemakaran is a satirical ode to the movie-making and film criticism world. Written by Thamizh Aadhavan and sung by Vangal Pulla Vicky, this song implicates the local lingo with movie references, and summarizes the movie, the clash between the filmmakers and the critics. It is brief, yet it is chocked with a rhythmic kick and it appears when the film is having crucial moments where Kissa is trapped in a haunted film theatre. The audience were fond of this song terming it fun and funny and this song was applauded as one of the songs in the movie that is much creative in terms of the lyrics.
DD Next Level may lack a well-developed commercial soundtrack, yet its music incorporates additional satire and meta-commentary into the movie. Both parties succeed in bringing out the focus of the film on the insanity of film and critique culture and self-referential humor.
How to Watch
DD Next Level movie is already in theatres, so, now, in case you want to watch it, you can watch it on theatres, you can use BookMyshow or District app to find out your nearest theatres, and see whether it is still screening this movie or not, in case you are not able to go to some cinema and watch this movie there, then you can wait until it comes to the digital OTT release, after its theatrical release is completed.
ZEE5 bought the OTT release rights of the movie and the movie will be released at the platform after the theatrical release. Then all one will need is to buy a subscription which will be cheaper than the ticket to the cinema and will get access to all the movies that are offered on Zee5.
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