Ahead of 'Rifle Club,' Every Aashiq Abu Film, Ranked

Imagine entering a DVD library in 2024. You’re likely to find one of Aashiq Abu’s films in every section, including the one for short films. From comedies to romance, horror to action, there’s not a genre he hasn’t touched, inventing a few on his 15-year journey. Salt N’ Pepper (2011) kickstarted a wave of food-based movies in Malayalam cinema. Idukki Gold (2013) was among our earliest stoner comedies. Rani Padmini (2015) combined a female-friendship drama with a road movie. As producer, he also backed two legit classics, Maheshinte Prathikaram (2016) and Ee.Ma.Yau (2018) and now he turns cinematographer (a first for his own film) with Rifle Club, alongside the odd acting performance or two, making him as much multi-dimensional as he is multi-genre.

Before Rifle Club, we rank the films of one of our most influential filmmakers:  

11. Naaradan (2022)

It’s not that we feel the need to disagree with what Aashiq Abu wants to say with this film. The issue, as we learnt with Naaradan and a film or two more, was how he chose to say it. On the surface, a set-in-Kerala takedown of sensationalist 24/7 news media should have resulted in a more incisive film. Its lead character CP (Tovino Thomas), based on an infamous modern-day TV journalist, too shouldn’t have felt this loud and jarring. But apart from these, it felt like a film that detoured from a realistic portrayal of the newsroom to a verbose courtroom drama, just so it could deliver its message faster. It’s Aashiq entering the Madhur Bhandarkar zone, a zone of no interest.

10. Gangster (2014)

It’s been over a decade since the release of Gangster, yet few Mammootty films have come close to the hype and excitement generated by Aashiq’s second collaboration with the Megastar. The promotional material, including the film’s title font, trailer and songs, remain fresh to this day, as does the stunning animated opening sequence rumoured to have cost a bomb. Yet coolth alone did not cut it for this anti-drug gangster drama. Despite a few standout moments, Gangster was too flat and too derivative for an OG like Mammootty. 

9. Neelavelicham (2023)

Neelavelicham is a gorgeously-shot colour update of Bhargavi Nilyam (1964), the genre-defining blockbuster that would come to invent the structure of the South Indian horror movie. But without subversion or any kind of reinvention, Neelavelicham’s only novelty was that of accidentally stumbling upon a high-resolution print of an ill-preserved 60 year-old movie. The performances, the mood and the odd dialogues, all paled in comparison to the original, leaving you with a film without a soul. 

8. Daddy Cool (2009)

When we look back at films that changed Malayalam cinema, we talk of obvious choices like Big B (2007), Traffic (2011), Chappa Kurishu (2011) and Bangalore Days (2014). But when it comes to pure aesthetics, Daddy Cool is seldom given its due for softly nudging forward? the look of the mainstream family movie. Shot by Sameer Thahir, there’s a visual consistency that looked beyond the erstwhile habit of equating ‘good looking’ to ‘violently colourful’. But beyond its good looks there’s not much to remember about Aashiq Abu’s debut, a mishmash of ideas that falls somewhere between cutesy comedy and half-done star vehicle.

7. Da Thadiya (2012)

For a film that predates Instagram filters or social media chatter about body positivity, Da Thadiya (Hey Fatso) made great points about society’s perception of one’s body and how it affects one’s perception of oneself. It cast as its lead a character mainstream Malayalam cinema was otherwise making jokes about. It also cast a “hero” (Nivin Pauly) as the villain to underline this exact sentiment and subvert notions of heroism. But in the process of making this political statement, the film also forced within itself the beats of a typical election movie. What’s worse is how some of the jokes in the film haven’t aged well at all. The results were mid at best as it tried to handle two heavyweight topics with the lightness of a feel-good comedy. 

6. Rani Padmini (2015)

It’s another one of Aashiq Abu’s films that would perhaps have done better today than it did when it released. It was the OG female-friendship movie, or a womance, before that was ever a thing. It placed at its centre two stars playing two diverse characters (Rani, Padmini, like the Queen of Mewar), with one running towards her past while the other tried to actively run away from it. Yet they both found themselves through each other in this journey. The film’s dream-like climax, in which both Rani and Padmini are fitted with wings (symbolically and figuratively) to the sound of Sayanora Philip’s ‘Mizhimalarukal’ remains a precious cinematic moment. It discussed feminism in the form of a soft, gentle whisper.  

5. 22 Female Kottayam (2012)

It’s not easy to forget the experience of watching  22FK for the first time. It is among the most violent films in Malayalam cinema, a rape-revenge drama in which the woman stood up against her abusers. As a thriller, it holds up well, getting you uncomfortably close to the trauma experienced by its protagonist. The performances haven’t aged either with Rima Kalingal acing the role of a broken woman trying to piece herself back together. This was also one of the first films that got you to see the impact of an actor like Fahadh Faasil. But when it comes to messaging, it remains a product of its time, playing out like a cautionary tale for women who migrate for work (Tessa is a nurse working in Bangalore, trying to find a job abroad). The way it talks about Tessa’s dignity, her decisions and the film’s gaze have all contributed to discussions and debates since, making it a pop-cultural phenomenon bigger than the movie itself.

4. Idukki Gold (2013)

Everything about Idukki Gold, right from casting (he chose five stardom-adjacent actors of the 80s), plot, soundtrack to title, makes it Aashiq Abu’s wildest swing. In theory, it is as indie as a film can get with a plot about a middle-aged man trying to reunite his boarding school gang, only to later go in search of the magical joint they smoked as teenagers. But within this, he planted tender human stories, like that of a comrade trying to find love after widowhood or the one about a childless couple who’d decided to part ways. Micro moments like that of a wife shutting off a leaky tap before leaving her home of 20 years made Idukki Gold surprisingly moving. It is surely something of an acquired taste, an oddly-paced dramedy with a bunch of goofy characters. But for those of us who were moved by it, Idukki Gold became something of a secret code, instantly bringing you closer to those this movie spoke to. 

3. Salt N' Pepper (2011)  

There’s a special place in movie heaven if you were lucky enough to discover Salt N' Pepper before it avalanched into our first social media-driven success story. But truth be told, there wasn’t much to draw you into this film in the first place. It was being led by the director who made the underwhelming Daddy Cool, that too with a group of non-stars. But the film’s posters, including its tagline “Oru dosha undakiya katha” (a story made by a dosa or a story of how a dosa was made), did enough to pique one’s interest. One step into the theater, that was all it took before you were transported. The opening credits instantly became the stuff of legends, featuring legendary street food joints from across the state. Part food-porn, part rom-com, Salt N' Pepper invented a sub-genre, just as it may also have given birth to a genre of people we now call food vloggers. 

2. Virus (2019)   

There’s a tiny stretch towards the end of Virus, in which it becomes a lesser film, succumbing to the weight of an agenda. But every minute until then is a tiny miracle, a nerve-wracking docu-drama that takes us into the lives of a dozen complex characters, just as many sub-plots and a major virus outbreak without ever letting you look away. The imagery, the pain and the frenetic pace of the ICU at the Government Medical College (shot on location), Kozhikode gets recreated, giving you an eerily close look at the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak. Yet despite the many threads and the harrowing details you’d expect from a medical thriller, it remained focussed in telling you a story about the human spirit, something we now call the real “Kerala Story”. 

1. Mayaanadhi (2017)

Mayaanadhi isn’t a film you can consume as much as it is one that consumes you. Any exercise to revisit its surreal universe forces you into a bittersweet thought loop you do not want to escape. It is what you’d call a doomed romance, a tragedy to begin with, right from the moment Mathan (Tovino Thomas) crawls back into Aparna’s (Aishwarya Lekshmi) life. Theirs is not the usual love story with a neat beginning, middle or end. It is messy by design and when we first meet them, they’re somewhere in the middle of their story.

We identify with them as though we’ve spoken the exact lines they’re now saying. But this isn’t a story about one fugitive as much as it is about two. Mathan might be the one running away from the law but Aparna too is on the run from the person she becomes when she’s with Mathan. You sense the pain Mathan has caused her, yet you find yourself cheering her on as we see her letting go of defences, allowing herself to be vulnerable again. What happens after was inevitable, but when it finally does happen, it’s not about the surprise as is about how much we’ve let them Feels like a word is missing here. Which is probably why you rewatch the movie again in the hope that something changes, at least this time around. And in that infinite thought loop, you imagine where Aparna is today, what she’s doing, if she’s happy, or if she’s still waiting for Mathan to return... only to be hurt again.