Director Tarun Teja was busy doing the sound mixing for his debut feature film Asvins when we reached out to him for an interview. With palpable excitement, Teja starts off by talking about Asvins' soundscape. "A total of 300 hours were spent to craft the soundscape of this film. A horror film needs total immersion and we did everything we could, right from the sound, colour correction, to the writing and visuals to make this an immersive experience," says Teja.

Asvins is a psychological horror film that revolves around the horrors unleashed after a 1500-year-old curse is lifted. On why he chose such a peculiar name, Tarun explains, "The name refers to the twin gods of Rig Veda, who are gods of medicine, healing, and good health. They can also bring back people from death." Having researched many mythological texts before finding an intriguing thread to weave his own fiction, Tarun says, "Even though the film has strong connections to Indian mythology, almost 90 per cent of the film takes place in and around London."

The prominence of Vasanth Ravi's character in the film shines through when Tarun explains why he chose him for the role. "It is a very demanding role. I wanted a kind of rawness for the character that I thought Vasanth Ravi expressed well in Taramani. And then I saw the Rocky trailer and felt he would be perfect for the role." Tarun reveals that Vasanth went through extensive preparations and acting workshops to play the role. "Since I've known him for quite some time, we isolated ourselves from each other, and even the rest of the team to research for the role. We travelled a lot, and he did a lot of script readings."

Assuring Asvins will not be a typical horror film, Tarun says, "I am a big fan of the genre, and I've seen everything from Ram Gopal Varma sir's films to The Conjuring franchise, and all our Tamil horror films too. As a fan of the genre, I think I have done justice to it." Talking about the central theme of Asvins, Tarun shares, "The film, at its core, is about fear. It is one of the most basic and primal emotions that all of us deal with and we have tried our best to translate the thrills associated with that emotion through the film," he signs off.

Apart from Vasanth Ravi, the cast includes Vimala Raman, Muralidaran, Sara Menon, UdhayaDeep, and Simran Pareek. While the film was earlier supposed to release on June 9, the makers have confirmed that Asvins will hit the theatres on June 23.