The Malayalam hit Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is India's ideas-rich south doing the kind of multipart mythological actioner that the country's moneyed north has so far struggled to bolt together with any real skill or conviction, let alone flair. By contrast, writer-director Dominic Arun endows his original material with the scope and sweep of a comic book; with style, via a palette of neons that makes the John Wick movies seem restrained; with satisfying action, allowing us to both see and recoil from every punch thrown; most importantly of all in the serial context, he gives it thrilling speed. Arun isn't messing around here, and he's certainly not slowing down to set things up; his main characters are mysteries trailing coattails to which we viewers must cling. We can see for ourselves that this chapter's heroine Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) is a twentysomething woman working nights in a sushi restaurant, yet that doesn't quite explain her sidehustle retrieving items for a father-and-son-run organisation, nor why she's papered over her flat's windows, nor her generally baleful, melancholy presence. Granted, she's being stalked by a cop (Sandy Master) whose demeanour is roughly as reassuring as Robert Patrick's in Terminator 2, but even that enmity proves something of a puzzle. We're on surer ground whenever the film switches focus to the boys in the flat across the road, one of whom, the sweetly clueless Sunny (Naslen), has developed a wistful crush on his new neighbour; here, Arun invites us into the warm embrace of the well-played slacker comedy. But even these potheads don't realise what they're getting into, namely that rare mass movie that at every turn demands participants and viewers alike keep up, keep their eyes open and keep their wits about them.
Arun isn't just building worlds, it turns out, but the worlds behind the worlds. Yet for all his ambition, he's never found reaching or fumbling, as so many of these Part One movies have been in their hurry to get to the exciting stuff that makes good trailers. You quickly sense this writer-director knows every square inch of this story like the back of his hand: he knows the world, the lore, who these people are and what they do to fill their days and nights. He knows when best to reveal this information, and - most crucially - he knows where this story's biggest surprises are: he spends much of Chapter 1's first half planting seeds that eventually flower into verdant narrative life. This is the kind of worldbuilding that invites us to do some of the heavy lifting for ourselves, and thereby to share in both the process of discovery and the eventual sense of achievement. We spend that same first half being pulled hither and thither while trying to put two and two together, to figure out just what Chandra's deal is, and how everybody else relates to her. These surprises are best discovered for yourself; all I'll say here is that we're dealing not just with mythology but horror mythology, as made explicit by a pre-interval sequence that encompasses gorgeous rotoscoping, a historical wrong, a cave full of bats, and the most extraordinarily feral child performance you'll witness in a cinema all year. Here, Lokah Chapter 1 begins to recall the grand, audience-pulling spectacle of SS Rajamouli's now decade-old Baahubali films, only redrawn as termite art: it's a movie constructed from the ground up by a creative raised not on devotional prayers and picture books, rather B-movies and knock-off DVDs, someone who's fully internalised what it takes to make a movie truly move.
It's not just motion, though; these characters are drawn every bit as dynamically as the action. Our female lead, in real life the daughter of the celebrated writer-director Priyadarshan, has an unusual, Aubrey Plaza-ish screen presence, turning a slightly soporific, low-energy bearing - that of somebody who's been up all night - to her considerable advantage. Her Chandra is older and wearier than she first appears, and she simply has little-to-no time either for those powerful men attempting to waylay her or the swoony-moony boys across the street - not even the good-natured Sunny in his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, the funniest movie wardrobe choice in some while. Hat tip to costume designer Melwy J. for ensuring the boys' leisurewear keeps up its own running commentary on the action - more clues sewn into the fabric of the film - but it's also representative of Arun's ability to wear his mythos lightly, casually: he's built a world to hang out and have fun in, not to convene council meetings or carry out a tax audit, as per a Nolan or Villeneuve. The nimble facility of his storytelling here doesn't just show up Bollywood, but Hollywood; stretching and popping before our eyes, Lokah is the summer's best shot at this kind of youthful bubblegum, an infusion of fresh blood that also presents as a compelling reason to get off the couch and go out after dark. As hinted by a second half that reconfigures this local matter into a pan-Indian concern, this story is about to get bigger, starrier and more convoluted, and Arun will need to be very careful if he's not to lose touch with this first chapter's abundant goblin pleasures. But we can cross that rickety bridge as, when and if we get to it. For now, Lokah delivers exactly what you want from an item of serial storytelling: a strong desire to see Chapter 2, with its promise of more goblins besides, stat.
Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is now playing in selected cinemas.
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