Disaster movies are quite a rare genre in Indian Cinema but a genre that is heavily liked by Indians with the super success of Independence day, Armageddon, Day After Tomorrow and the recent record breaking 2012 standing testimony to the fact. Dam999 is supposed to be based on a dam disaster in China but setting it in Kerala, the statement it wants to make is quite clear. Unfortunately Sohan Roy puts too many sub plots that the main plot looks rather lost in the crowd.

An impending horror and 9 different people having different problems face the same incident differently. Every single person takes one of the navarasa's to give us an array of emotions. Unfortunately the movie was supposed to be about a dam disaster and we have come in for some stereoscopic graphic fun. Finally the Dam does break but is it a bit too late?

Sohan Roy could have made a better movie on a subject which is very relevant today especially in the south. I guess he wanted to convey his take on several subjects through his movies and instead of making several movies on each he made one movie with every single subject thrown in. Be it the Navarasa angle, talking about superstitions, about Ayurveda, about astrology, about politics, about culture, about mother nature..  etc he just loves to preach. If only someone had preached him about film making we could have had a better experience. The movie didn’t need to be a 3D stereoscopic movie in the first place and you didn't need so many characters for a disaster movie. And at the end of it all not even a single character stays fresh in your memory. The swat style rescue effort will definitely evoke some laughter from the audience but its unintentional humour. After some 1 ½ hour of talking finally the dam breaks and then you are shown some badly worked on graphics which will make you feel cheated. By the way its a half English, little bit of Hindi and tamil and the movie is based on Kerala. 

So many in the cast and none impresses. The only three who come close to impressing you are Ashish Vidyarthi, Rajit Kapoor and Vimala Raman, in the same order, but they too suffer from bad characterization. The rest of the cast are too theatrical or just sing out their amateurish dialogues with minimal to no emotion.

Technically the movie is decent for the budget they have used, Ajayan Vincent’s cinematography is decent – it has a too blue tinted camera work which did look cool at the start but over the passage of time it tires you.  Editing, by Suresh Pai, misses the mark thanks mainly to the haphazard screenplay. Art work by Thotta Tharani is spectacular, the sets done by him will amaze you. Ousephachan’s music is decent but none mention worthy.

Overall it’s a lost cause.  It’s a disastrous disaster movie which will find few to no takers at the boxoffice.

Verdict: I second the official website – damthemovie.com