Dark Is the Dada Director's Thank-You Note, Turned Into a Psychological Horror Thriller

The title is the first clue to how personal this one is. Dark, the producer Ganesh K Babu explained at the trailer launch, is short for “thanks to Dada,” his way of repaying the team that turned his directorial hit into a phenomenon. Having made his name as a director, Ganesh has flipped to producing here, writing the story himself and using it to launch a clutch of newcomers rather than cashing his success in on a bigger star. That decision is the real spine of the film, and everyone on the stage kept circling back to it.

Dark is pitched as an experimental psychological horror thriller, the kind of film its makers say they have long envied in Malayalam and in world cinema and wanted to attempt in Tamil. It is directed by debutant Kalyan K Jegan, shot by Ravi Sakthi and scored by Manu Ramesan, and produced jointly by MG Studios’ APV Maran, Ganesh K Babu and Five Star K Senthil. The lead is Ajay Karthi, in only his second film, opposite debutante Anchana Nethran, with Natty Natraj, K Bhagyaraj, Sibi Sathyaraj, VTV Ganesh, Aravind, Sahul and Naren rounding out the cast.

The trailer itself was the talking point, and the makers leaned into its difference rather than apologising for it. There is also a promo song with a genuinely eye-catching pedigree: sung by Yuvan Shankar Raja and GV Prakash Kumar, composed by S Thaman, cut specifically to introduce the film’s world. That is three of Tamil cinema’s busiest music names converging on a single newcomer-led project, which tells you how much goodwill Ganesh is able to call in.

Ajay Karthi, who is Five Star K Senthil’s son, was candid about how steep the climb was. He called Dark less a film than a lesson, the place he actually learned how cinema works, and told the story of fighting for an extra take on the climax shot when the director had already approved it. Ganesh, watching from the side and irritated at the delay, said the second take landed like a slap to the face, it became his favourite shot in the film, and he now lets any actor on his sets ask for one more when they believe in it. He admitted he had written the part imagining Dhanush in it, and that he carried doubts about Ajay right up to the edit, before the dubbing convinced him the newcomer had carried the whole film on his shoulders.

The room filled out the picture from there. Natty Natraj recalled bracing for a family sentiment script and getting a horror story instead, then being won over watching Ajay in the dub. Gautham Karthik, who has a film lined up with the same team, called Ajay Tamil cinema’s “new chocolate boy” and praised the writing and visuals. Director Kalyan, also making his stage debut, traced the project to a school friendship with Ganesh, the two of them feeling their way through a first film as a director, hero and heroine who were all new to it together. Co-producer Five Star K Senthil, who initially balked at launching his son in a serious ghost film, said he had since backed it all the way.

The most expansive speech came from Pa Ranjith, who used Dark to make a wider case for the moment Tamil cinema is in. He described the theatre as a democratic space, argued that small, content-led films are pulling audiences back to halls, and pointed to recent winners like Blast, Sirai and the big-budget Karuppu, along with the houseful shows greeting the newly released Habibi, as proof. Producing newcomers is risky and far from easy, he said, which is exactly why people like Five Star Senthil succeeding with small-budget films matters. He also praised Ganesh’s habit of turning his own assistants into directors, the very route that put Kalyan on this stage.

Ganesh closed by laying out a release run that backs his talk with a schedule: Dark arrives this month, Karate Babu the next, and Bloody Politics after that, three productions in three months. For a man who nearly quit cinema during the pandemic before a single phone call about Dada changed his life, calling a horror thriller a thank-you note, and then stacking two more films behind it, is its own kind of statement. Dark has finished post and is readied for a theatrical release this month.