LOKAH: CHAPTER 1 – CHANDRA MOVIE REVIEW
Cast: Kalyani Priyadarshan, Naslen, Sandy, Arun Kurian, Chandu Salimkumar, Nishanth Sagar, Vijayaraghavan, Shivajith Padmanabhan, Nithya Shri, Sarath Sabha, Tovino Thomas (cameo), Sunny Wayne (cameo), Dulquer Salmaan (cameo), Mammootty (voice)
Director: Dominic Arun
Rating: 3.75/5
The first time Chandra bares her fangs, the film bares its intent. Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is a superhero origin that drinks from folklore and lets science pick up the bill. A nightly woman in Bengaluru brushes up against a cop-backed organ trade, discovers she is the legendary yakshi Kalliyankattu Neeli returned, and decides the city’s predators have met their match.
Dominic Arun builds the world from the ground up. Neon smears across rain-slick streets, nightclubs glow like altars, and the camera watches a city that looks plugged in yet spiritually frayed. Nimish Ravi’s images have purpose, not just polish. He keeps the action readable and the spaces coherent, so the myth feels embedded in a real urban grid rather than pasted on top. Jakes Bejoy’s score pushes with intent too, opening up the scale without drowning scenes that need quiet.
The powers are framed with pleasing clarity. Chandra heals on blood, moves with unnatural speed, cannot linger in sunlight, and exudes a hunter’s pull that unsettles the men who underestimate her. The self-discovery is not a lab accident or a gadget spree. It is an awakening. Midway through, cross-cuts braid Neeli’s folk history with the present and the pieces click. The mythology is not an Easter-egg scavenger hunt. It is the rulebook. Cameos from Chathan and a Kathanar descendant are not winks so much as signposts for a Kerala-myth sandbox the franchise intends to keep digging into.
For once, a superhero introduction knows how to pace itself. The first half sets the ground with small, telling scenes. A thwarted acid attack that signals what this hero will stand against. A kidnapping that flips into a vampiric reveal. A bite that turns the antagonist Nachiyappa into something worse than a dirty cop. The second half escalates without losing shape. There is a nimble rescue that gives Chathan an actual job to do, a tense refuge under Kathanar’s line, a government strike unit closing in, and a final confrontation that ends with a simple, decisive gesture rather than a ten-minute CGI scream-a-thon.
Kalyani Priyadarshan plays Chandra with a calm, slightly distant poise that suits a being who has walked longer nights than everyone around her. The physicality is clean, the stillness is intentional, and the occasional flicker of warmth lands because it is rationed. Naslen’s Sunny is the counterweight the film needs, supplying heart and humour without turning into a mascot. Sandy’s Nachiyappa is odious in all the right ways, a smug ideologue who becomes a credible physical threat once he is infected. The bench is deep. Arun Kurian, Chandu Salimkumar, and Vijayaraghavan round out a city that feels lived in. The voice of Mammootty as Moothon gives the larger design an eerie calm, and the end-credit reveal of Dulquer’s Charlie promises a wider playground without hijacking this chapter.
The action benefits from clear geography and honest cuts. Yannick Ben choreographs for impact over confusion. Rooms get rearranged, bodies fly with weight, and wirework is used to suggest a predatory grace rather than to fling characters like rubber. The production design leans on sets smartly. You can feel the hand of the art team in the clubs, safe houses, and back alleys. It is not a money-flex. It is taste. The VFX is deployed with restraint, most often to extend space, tweak night skies, and paint fangs rather than to build entire sequences out of pixels.
Not everything clicks equally. The runtime is a touch long and a few connective scenes repeat information the film has already conveyed. Nachiyappa’s worldview could have used one more sharp edge beyond garden-variety misogyny. A couple of background plates look soft when the camera lingers. And the fights are typical Malayalam style slow-mo stuff.
Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is not here to reinvent superhero cinema. It is here to show that a folklore-first grammar can build a credible, kinetic origin if the craft is right and the choices are local. On that count, it delivers.