Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra is a refreshing take on the superhero genre from the Malayalam film industry. Director Dominic Arun gives us a fun, female-led supernatural story with rich visuals, strong performances, intriguing lore, and an organic build-up of its cinematic universe.

Kalyani Priyadarshan is Chandra, a goth girl who keeps to herself. She’s just arrived in the city and takes a job working nights, which suits her quiet and private lifestyle.

Her neighbor Sunny (Naslen) takes an interest in her and makes efforts to introduce her to his slacker friends/roommates Naijil (Arun Kurian) and Venu (Chandu Salimkumar). 

An incident at a party leads to a tense moment with crooked cop Inspector Nachiyappa Gowda (Sandy Master), a major misogynist who is involved in the illegal organ trade.

Soon, the gang finds themselves wrapped up in a supernatural world that combines local folklore with a fun riff on cinematic superhero origins.

Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra has been the talk of my Letterboxd feed recently, with some comparing it to Sinners, so I was very curious to check it out. It’s not every day that a film with a smaller budget can achieve such universal acclaim and pan-Indian success—let alone a female-led film!

Right off the bat, the story pulls audiences in, leaving intriguing plot breadcrumbs that keep us hungry for more information about our mysterious heroine and the lore of the world. The pacing of the exposition and reveals works well because it’s often intercut with action or used to stitch together multiple story elements, keeping the plot moving while simultaneously highlighting what we need to know.

Chandra is quiet, monotonous, almost robotic, but she seems world-weary in a way that tells us there’s more to her than we initially see. Priyadarshan takes a character who could easily feel wooden and gives her that extra undercurrent of sadness and heart. Her performance isn’t just strong in terms of acting; she also succeeds with the action, and I love how the film flips the script of the damsel in distress by making her the hero and the boys the ones in danger.

Chandra’s icy exterior is slowly worn down by the adorable awkwardness of Sunny, who is friendly and warm, much like his name suggests. Naslen once again delivers a great blend of nervousness and sweetness, something I really loved about his performance in Premalu, and the character is lovable along the lines of peak Michael Cera here. Sunny and his friends are fun and full of life, even if they haven’t actually achieved much of anything, and their interactions give us some of the best laughs in the film.. 

All this is presented through beautiful cinematography from Nimish Ravi, whose colorful lighting and shadowy frames evoke comic book panels, Blade Runner 2049, or the works of Dario Argento. Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra is a very good-looking film, which feels even more impressive when you compare its budget to enormous pan-Indian blockbusters like Kalki 2898 AD or Pushpa. 

In a world where it feels like so many movies try to spin off into a soulless cinematic universe, Lokah stands out for organic world-building and creating a universe we actually want to explore. To do all this while centering the story on a female superhero feels like a movie miracle in and of itself. It’s a truly impressive first chapter and I’ll be very interested to see where this universe goes in the future.