Varathan

A Malayalam thriller set in the hills of Kerala. Abin loses his job in Dubai. He and his wife Priya come back to India and go to a house that belonged to her family, standing alone on an estate in the High Range. The house has been empty for years. They start repairing it, plan a small business, and try to settle. The village does not accept them. Priya is watched from the first day: men on the road, men at the fence, men who find reasons to come to the door. Nobody does anything actionable at first. It is looking, following, remarks, and a slowly closing circle. Abin is calm and not a fighter. He tries to handle it correctly, through neighbours and through the police, and none of it works. From there the film builds to one night at the house. What the narrative is interested in is not violence but permission: the film shows a group of men working out, step by step, that nothing will happen to them, and it is the working out that is frightening rather than the act. The title means outsider, and it is aimed at the couple and finally back at the village. The look is unusually stylised for the story. Slow motion, heavy shadow, saturated colour and long lens work, which is the director's signature and divides opinion here. Fahadh Faasil plays Abin and Aishwarya Lekshmi plays Priya. Amal Neerad directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants a tense, well-shot home invasion film. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with sustained sexual threat; that is most of the running time before anything else happens.