Vadakkan

I'm honestly surprised by the high ratings for Vadakkan (2025). Many people keep praising it as a "good attempt," but I don't see it that way. It feels like the filmmakers simply tried to imitate Hollywood-style horror by mixing found footage elements with some bits of our culture. There's nothing wrong with experimenting, but this felt more like copying than creating something original. Instead of trying to replicate Western horror tropes, they should have focused on building a horror experience rooted in our own rich traditions and storytelling. That would have made a much stronger impact.

Meh/10 for me.

Its been a while Ive given a horror movie only 1/10 but this movie made me open up another category on my horror movie list "so bad that i stopped watching" I gave up after 1 hr 20 The story line is pretty boring, acting is meh, the effects are insanely cheap and overall im not much of a Fan of these camera perspectives but thats subjective tbf. I wouldnt recommend to anyone who enjoys horror movies with paranormal activity, I cant believe this movie has such a good review. I was waiting 40 Minutes for something interesting to happen since i found the Story line boring and when it did I was amazed by the quality of effects, Ive rarely ever seen something so cheap.

Boring story. Nothing new.

Could have avoided unwanted vulgarity and bad language.

Should Learn from neat movies like romancham.

Disappointed. Expected better standards from Malayalam movies.

Sound effects were good.

Location was beautiful.

If you update 1 star here, it automatically gets updated as 9 ?

Now I can understand why this movie is having 8 stars from so many😀 Overrated beyond acceptance.

Failed attempt to copy some English movie.

Ending is predictable.

If the story is strong and relatable to common man, people will like it.

This is not a family movie.

This is not worth the time spend.

The first sign of trouble is the audio editing and dubbing. There's no depth and the entire audio is distractingly distanced from what's on the screen. You can just imagine the actors dubbing in the studio with the mics entirely in their mouths. Even basics like the voice of someone behind another being lower is just missed.

The screenplay is disjointed.. and not in a well scripted horror movie edge-of-seat disjointed kind of way but in a incompetent kind of way. There are so many plot holes from scene to scene and the direction is lacking. The background of the plot and story is inconsistent and there's no resolution for the audience at the end when it could easily have been good with just basic homework.

The actors are competent, the cinematography is great and the background score, except for the first entirely out-of-place song, is decent.

It looks like a basic good concept of story was established, decent actors were cast and then everything else just crashed into a school play run by the 5th standard history teacher. Rewatching any one episode of the 20 year old series Supernatural, would've been entirely so much more satisfying.

I enjoy bad horror movies. Especially ones that try. Here is a movie that pretends to try, but really does nothing.

This movie fails at every step. It fails to make it's characters interesting, it fails the make the plot engaging, it fails to create the atmosphere it intends to, and most importantly it is hard to make sense of.

Was the investigation thrilling? No.

Was there any sign of decent acting? No.

Is the screenplay good? No.

Is there good camera work? Yes.

Is there good music? Although even the music failed to create any real excitement, it did have some good aspects and could have been more impactful if the scenes made sense.

Would not recommend.