When Malayalam filmmaker Dominic Arun writes his memoir, he can pinpoint the exact day when his life changed forever. That would be August 28, 2025, the day Arun’s Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra was released in cinemas and was instantly declared a blockbuster.

Arun’s fantasy adventure, the first in a planned series, revolves around a league of superheroes that includes Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan). A centuries-old female vampire in human form, Chandra crosses paths with criminals behind an organ trafficking ring, the venal policeman Nachiyappa (Sandy Master), and her bashful neighbour Sunny (Naslen).

The movie explores how Chandra becomes a vampire, her encounter with Sunny and his friends, and the manner in which her story intersects with the other superheroes. Cameos from the likes of Tovino Thomas and Dulquer Salmaan – who has produced Lokah through his company Wayfarer Films – indicate the kind of universe-building that is typically found in Hollywood adaptations of Marvel comics.

The buzz around Lokah had been building in the run-up to its release, Arun told Scroll. The trailer had been well received, especially because there hadn’t been a woman-led superhero film in Malayalam cinema before. Arun and Salmaan felt that the movie certainly had potential.

“We knew that we had made a decent film, but none of us was expecting such a massive response,” Arun said. “The kind of response not just from Kerala but also Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Bombay, the Gulf countries, the UK – it has been amazing.”

Hints that the makers had a phenomenon, rather than a hit, on their hands came from late-night shows on August 28. By the next day, Arun said, there was “a massive turnaround”.

He added, “The news from Kerala suggested that things were going out of proportion. It’s been a crazy three weeks since then. I haven’t been familiar with this feeling of success until this point, so all of this is alien to me.”

Lokah continues to reel in the crowds. Arun has been in an almost never-ending spiral of promotional activities. He has travelled to several places beyond Kerala, including Hyderabad, Chennai, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with visits planned to the United Kingdom.

In interviews, the 40-year-old filmmaker has been explaining how Lokah grew in scope and ambition after Dulquer Salmaan decided to bankroll the film.

“The initial drafts didn’t have so many Easter eggs, but when Dulquer heard it, he suggested that we add more characters and expand the universe,”Arun said. “For instance, the Moothon character voiced by Mammooty was added later. Dulquer’s feedback was that if only if we ourselves believed that there were bigger things to come would the audiences believe it too. This was the confidence that Dulquer gave us.”

Arun has also been responding to criticism that Priyadarshan’s stoic performance is robotic and unfeeling. “If I made Lokah again, I wouldn’t direct Kalyani any differently,” Arun asserted. “I don’t think she is robotic – I wanted her to be that way.”

Lokah has been particularly praised for the manner in which it rewrites as well as reorients Kerala’s folkloric traditions in a progressive, feminist direction. Chandra and the characters played by Salmaan and Thomas portray benign and positive versions of legendary types usually described as malevolent and harmful.

“We tend to underestimate audiences a lot – they are really smart, smarter than all of us,” Arun observed. “We don’t need to dumb down or spoon-feed anything to them. While writing the film, I wanted to keep things simple and give viewers only visual cues, rather than all the information. It is possible to make an honest film in an honest way.”

Lokah is only Arun’s second feature. A former engineer who quit his job at Wipro to pursue filmmaking, Arun co-wrote and directed Tharangam in 2017. The black comedy starred Tovino Thomas, Balu Varghese, Saiju Kurup, Dileesh Pothan and Santhy Balachandran.

“Tharangam was a bit of an experiment and didn’t do too well,” Arun said. “That did affect me, I had doubts about whether I was good enough to make films. It was disappointing for me as well as Tovino. While he made other films, it took me some time to move on from that failure.”

Arun’s family and friends kept urging him to give filmmaking another shot. He was involved with a few projects before and during the coronavirus pandemic that broke out in 2020, but nothing came of them.

Then Tovino Thomas called him again, telling him that with the rise of streaming platforms, the world was “more ready than before for crazier ideas”. In 2021, Basil Joseph’s Minnal Murali, in which Thomas plays a tailor in a small town who gains superpowers after being pulverised by lighting, was released directly on Netflix. The movie proved to be hugely popular.

“Minnal Murali sort of showed the way,” Arun said. “I had anyway always been a big fan of superhero films, and I wanted such films to be made in in our country too.”

In 2022, Arun sat down to write Lokah. A couple of drafts in, he recruited Santhy Balachandran as his co-writer. Balachandran also appears in a single shot in Lokah, suggesting that she will be in the sequel too.

“I felt that this was going to be a strong female-centric film, which needed layers that came from the experience of women,” Arun said. “No matter what I tried, I don’t think I could have brought that aspect to the table. That’s how Santhy got involved. It was all very subtly done, without being loud or too obvious.”

Balachandran told Scroll, “Dominic wanted to explore the idea that supernatural beings live amongst us,” she told Scroll. “The characters were to be introduced through the perspective of Sunny and his two friends.”

Following her appearance in Tharangam, Balachandran had been bouncing ideas off Arun. He had also directed an experimental music video that she wrote, titled Oblivion. The video was shot in 2021 by Lokah’s cinematographer, Nimish Ravi.

“This was the first time all of us worked together, and it was an exciting process,” Balachandran said. “I really liked the way Dominic and Nimish adapted ideas for the screen.”

When it came to Lokah, Balachandran brought in her background as a visual anthropology major from the University of Oxford.

“Dominic has the pulse of youth culture and was able to bring in all these incredible world-building elements, whereas my perspectives are a bit more from the academic side,” Balachandran said. “I am grateful to have had a collaborator like Dominic because he gave me the space to bring in my ideas.”

Balachandran said it was important for her to approach established folklore with fresh eyes – for instance, subvert the notion that a lone woman walking around at night is a predator or a threat to the moral order.

“For example, Dominic wanted Nachiyappa to be a policeman since he felt that people instinctively react with fear to the police, whereas for me, this was an exciting opportunity to look at how power works, to critique authoritarianism,” Balachandran said. “There was room in the original stories to re-interpret them, and Dominic was totally on board with this.”

The film’s success indicates that the risk-taking has paid off, Balachandran noted.

“The first layer of response was of people enjoying the experience that Dominic created – the storytelling, the visuals, the music,” she added. “Then people, especially women, started noticed small things, such as the fact that Chandra takes care of her own business and nobody comes in to finish her job for her.”

Among the cheekiest tweaks is with Sunny, played by Naslen. As Chandra’s neighbour, he is besotted with her, but then faints – repeatedly – when he realises who she actually is.

“Naslen was initially approached for the role of Sunny’s friend Venu [eventually played by Chandu Salimkumar],” Dominic Arun said. “Naslen isn’t concerned about his image. He doesn’t always want to play the lead or be in front of the camera all the time. He’s more concerned with the impact he has an actor.”

Sunny is among the characters who will return in Lokah: Chapter 2. But the sequel will happen only after the pixie dust from the first movie settles down.

“The whole process has been humbling and gratifying, but it’s also taking time to process the entire thing,” Arun said. “I will start writing the second film in a month or two.”

Also read:

‘Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra’: Five reasons why everyone is talking about the Malayalam superhero film

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