Shikandi Movie Review:
There is an interesting film buried inside Shikandi. The problem is, the film itself keeps interrupting it. The intent of director is visible from the opening sequence. The references to Mahabharatha— particularly the dynamic of Bhishma–Shikandi, are present to serve more than just philosophical purposes. The film wants to argue that mythology is not past tense; it survives through caste equations, land politics, fear, masculinity, and even through the bodies society refuses to understand. That is a fascinating starting point. But Shikandi becomes an example of a film that mistakes thematic density for dramatic depth.
Director: Gurumurthy V
Cast: Yuvraj Gowda, Khyathei, Raj Deepak Shetty , Nikhil Maliyakkal, Bala Rajawadi, Nikitha Swamy, Neethu Vanajakshi and Raghavendra NK
At one level, this is a story about building a hospital in a forgotten Karnataka village. Sangeetha (Khyathei), wants to create something useful for people who have been abandoned by systems larger than them. Surya (Yuvaraj Gowda), an orphan who arrives with a engineering crew, slowly falls in love with her. Interestingly, the film does not package Surya as the usual Kannada mass hero. He doesn’t enter with swagger, exaggerated dancing, or stylised punch moments. His most emotional gesture is giving Sangeetha the blueprint of the hospital she dreams of building. In theory, this is refreshing. In execution, the writing does not always know how to sustain such quietness.
The film becomes more compelling whenever Bhadra (Sanket Mesta) enters the frame. He is written less like a man and more like accumulated fear. People speak about the land as though it remembers blood. Nobody wants fresh stains on it. That idea—of geography carrying trauma—is far more haunting than the film’s actual horror elements.
And this is where Shikandi becomes difficult to classify. It is not fully horror. It is not fully spiritual drama either. It sits awkwardly between folklore, supernatural suggestion, social commentary, and commercial thriller elements. Sometimes that ambiguity works. Sometimes it feels like tonal confusion.
The hidden temple stretch, where the seven thrishul are removed, by the engineers unknowningly, is perhaps the film’s most revealing metaphor. Once protection is disturbed, buried violence resurfaces. The Bhoomi Puja and Adi Pooja sequences are staged with seriousness, but the film often mistakes ritual staging for emotional intensity. Merely showing smoke, chants, and fearful faces does not automatically create atmosphere.
The flashback involving Poornachandra (Nikhil Maliyakkal), the seven Jogathi disciples, and the transgender devotees of Yellamma Devi is where the film briefly discovers emotional weight. Here, Shikandi stops explaining itself and starts observing. The transgender characters are not treated as decorative suffering; they become carriers of belief, curse, and memory. But even here, the screenplay cannot resist overloading itself with subplots involving sand mafia politics, Rajendra’s revenge arc, seven spirits, hidden pasts, warnings and symbolic parallels to Mahabharatha. The result is not complexity but narrative congestion.
Yuvaraj Gowda performs with sincerity, though sincerity alone cannot compensate for uneven writing. Nikhil brings sharper screen presence in the flashback portions. Bala Rajwadi understands the film’s internal tone better than most others and therefore leaves a stronger impact. Deepak Rai Poojari to the angatognist-heavy stretches as Nikitha Swamy, Neethu Vanajakshi and Raghavendra RK among few others as jogathi disciples adds to the authenticity.
What finally remains with you after Shikandi directed by Gurumurthy V is not its plot, but its argument: that Mahabharatha keeps repeating itself because society keeps recreating the same moral failures in new forms. That is a strong idea. One only wishes the film trusted that idea enough to simplify everything around it.
