Varavu Movie Review

Homecoming. That is how Shaji Kailas' Varavu begins, with Paulson aka Pauly (Joju George) returning to his high-range hometown on parole and finding old scores waiting to be settled and old wounds ready to reopen. Fine, none of this is new territory for Malayalam cinema, and dated material by itself is hardly a crime. The problem is Varavu doesn't even try to adapt itself to 2026 sensibilities. This kind of story, this kind of treatment, might have worked twenty or thirty years back, in Shaji Kailas's prime, but now it just plays as a rerun nobody asked for. A silly, thin revenge saga, stitched together from bits of other, better films set in similar hillside milieus, with similar feudal villains and similar wronged heroes.

Director: Shaji Kailas
Cast: Joju George, Murali Gopy, Arjun Ashokan, Sukanya, Baiju Santhosh, Deepak Parambol, Baburaj, Vani Viswanath, Saniya Iyappan

Pauly's return brings him back to a town where some of them have old grudges against him. His younger brother William (Arjun Ashokan) had gone missing years before after falling for the daughter of powerful planter Kochettan (Murali Gopy), and that is what eventually got Pauly sent to prison. On a brief parole now, he starts settling scores, buried betrayals come to light, and rumours begin to spread that William might still be alive somewhere. Varavu tries to work as a mystery-tinged, action-packed revenge drama, moving between family tragedy and one fight after another.

That is also where AK Sajan's writing becomes the film's biggest stumbling block. The screenplay feels stale, while the dialogue often sounds theatrical and overly explanatory. Characters spend large stretches narrating information rather than allowing events to unfold organically. Shaji and Sajan reunite here after Chinthamani Kolacase, Red Chillies, and Dhrona 2010. Even the less successful films from that collaboration belonged to a time when this kind of storytelling and treatment still had an audience. With Varavu, however, it feels like both of them have gone back several decades in search of inspiration. The writing also follows such predictable beats that most scenes announce their destination the moment they start, making the journey itself largely devoid of tension or surprise. The result is a film that feels rooted in the 1990s, staged like something from the early 2000s, and released in 2026.

What's odd, though, is that Shaji has actually shown he can move forward. His post-pandemic Prithviraj Sukumaran films, Kaduva and Kaapa, proved that. Here he retreats fully into his old grammar, and it simply doesn't land anymore. The trademark tight frames, dramatic zooms and stylised shot divisions are all present. One can still spot flashes of the veteran filmmaker's flair in certain action sequences, but their placement feels mechanical. Fight after fight arrives not because the story demands it, but because the screenplay appears constructed around them.

Joju does what Joju does. There's no faking that hefty, immovable screen presence, the kind that worked quite well in Porinju Mariam Jose, Antony and Pani. Except those films wrapped an old-fashioned premise in something that at least gestured towards newer sensibilities, and Varavu doesn't bother. It just feels like a vehicle for Joju's 'quintal idi', with action blocks arriving and leaving without deepening anything. S Saravanan shoots it all competently enough, but competence in service of nothing much in terms of writing only carries a film so far.

The supporting cast fares unevenly. Murali Gopy plays the feudal menace well, and that part works. Sukanya delivers exactly the kind of melodramatic performance the role demands. Baburaj and Vani Viswanath are pushed into familiar vintage territory, while Baiju Santhosh and Azees Nedumangad do what they can with underwritten parts. Deepak Parambol is the predictable, self-serving bad guy, more or less a rehash of the Vijayakumar archetype from Lelam. As for Abhimanyu Shammy Thilakan, who shows up late as the brooding baddie, the less said the better. Looking as though he has run straight from the sets of Marco, he comes off more unintentionally funny than menacing.

For all its effort to evoke an older era of Malayalam commercial cinema, Varavu never really justifies why this story, told this way, needed to exist now. It ends up feeling less like a revival and more like a retread, one that mistakes going backwards for coming home.