There is a scene Krishand describes, not from his film but from everyday life, that explains everything about why he made Masthishka Maranam. "We are constantly scrolling, constantly consuming, rarely pausing to reflect on what we are watching or why we are watching it," he says. The National Award-winning filmmaker, whose movies have a way of hiding serious arguments inside riotous comedy, is talking about brain rot. But he is also, quietly, talking about all of us. His latest film, Masthishka Maranam (A Frankenbiting of Simon's Memories), releases on February 27, and it arrives with more noise than anything he has made before. That, it turns out, is deliberate.
A cyberpunk comedy investigation courtroom drama set in a neo-Kochi, the film follows a grieving father who enters a VR memory game and stumbles into the private world of the beloved superstar, Frida Soman. It is the kind of pitch that sounds unhinged until Krishand explains it, at which point it seems almost inevitable. The filmmaker behind Aavasavyuham, Purusha Pretham, Sangarsha Ghadana and Sambhava Vivaranam Nalarasangham has built a reputation for disguising serious ideas inside irresistible comedy. With Masthishka Maranam, that instinct reaches its most radical expression.
The genesis of the idea
Krishand is quick to clarify that the sci-fi architecture of the film was not the starting point. "Honestly, the first spark was not the sci-fi aspect. It began with me thinking about the ecosystem surrounding a woman actor across various industries. The way she is consumed, celebrated, protected, and criticised. The machinery that builds her into an idol also quietly feeds off her," he says. That ecosystem haunted him, and the emotional logic of grief and obsession found its way in. "What happens when someone who has emotionally invested their life into a public figure suddenly has access to her private reality? That emotional entry point felt very human to me," Krishand reflects. From there, the world of neo-Kochi was constructed, a city that looks like Kochi but thinks like Blade Runner. The film's references span a wide range: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, and even certain Priyadarshan comedies for their ensemble energy. Aesthetically, he borrowed from Blade Runner 2049 and retrofuturism. "In my mind, this is my first complete, end-to-end comedy," Krishand says. "It maintains humour throughout, though there is an afterthought, something reflective beneath the surface."
The quiet jab of a title
Masthishka Maranam translates to 'brain death,' which makes the film's chaotic, overstimulated world feel like a pointed joke. Krishand leans into that contradiction deliberately. "When you hear 'brain death', you imagine silence, stillness, maybe even emptiness. But what I see around us is the opposite. It is noise. It is overstimulation. It is ten tabs open in your head at the same time," he says. For him, brain death in the contemporary sense does not look like inactivity. "It looks like hyperactivity without reflection. We are constantly reacting but rarely thinking. We are emotionally triggered but morally detached," Krishand observes. The chaos on screen, he insists, is not stylistic indulgence. "The chaos you see in the film is actually the symptom," he adds pointedly.
Voyeurism as a mirror
The film's central protagonist, a father entering someone else's memories and witnessing things he was never meant to see, is not just a thriller device. It implicates the audience deliberately. Krishand sees the protagonist's transgression as a reflection of how all of us now live online. "Today, we all enter other people's lives through screens. We consume their happiest moments, their breakdowns, their scandals. Sometimes we feel entitled to it. Sometimes we justify it as harmless curiosity. We are all part of this ecosystem of content and spectacle," he says. When asked whether memory-sharing technology, if it existed, would be used for empathy or exploitation, Krishand does not hesitate. "I think we would start by saying it is for empathy. We would market it as empathy. We would package it as a revolutionary tool to understand each other better. But very quickly, it would become content," he reflects. The film lives in the grey area between those two impulses. "I was more interested in that grey area than in giving a clear moral verdict," Krishand says.
The item song and why it had to exist
One of the more talked-about elements of the film is an item number titled ‘Komala Thaamara’ featuring Rajisha Vijayan, who had previously spoken against such songs. Her participation has generated both curiosity and debate. Krishand is unapologetic about the reasoning. "When I looked at the script, that moment genuinely required that element because of the subject we are dealing with. The film talks about spectacle, consumption, and it does not look away from how female stardom is packaged. If I am exploring those themes, I cannot pretend that the idea of an item song does not exist within that ecosystem," he explains. He is clear that neither the staging nor Rajisha's commitment was casual. There was, Krishand says, deep thought behind how it was framed and what it was saying within the narrative. On Rajisha's own evolution on the matter, he frames it generously. "I believe in what I call neuroplasticity. The ability to change one's thinking when necessary. If someone once said they would not do something, and later they find a meaningful reason to do it, that is growth," he reflects. He welcomes the conversation that has followed. "If the song makes people question why it exists and what it represents, then it has already done part of its job," Krishand says.
Promotion as performance
For a filmmaker whose previous work reached audiences largely through festivals, OTT platforms, and smaller circuits, the theatrical push behind Masthishka Maranam marks a genuine departure. With production partner Ajith Vinayaka Films driving aggressive promotions, it is the first time a Krishand film is receiving this kind of full-scale visibility. He sees no separation between the campaign and the film itself. "We're exploiting the eyeball culture because the film is about it. When you can correlate all that, you'll understand that the promotion and the film are the same. It's all part of the design," he says.
Beyond this release, Krishand confirms that a sequel to Masthishka Maranam is already planned, with ambitions to cast a top leading Malayalam female actor to headline it. A "magical love story" led by Tovino Thomas and Darshana Rajendran, also featuring Jagadish, is his immediate next venture. And the buzz around a Mohanlal project has not died down, and Krishand does little to discourage it, saying the discussions have been "creatively stimulating" while keeping further details close to his chest.