'Sarvam Maya' Movie Review: Nivin Pauly Anchors A Clumsy But Heartfelt Horror-Comedy

Prabhendu (Nivin Pauly) is an atheist. Belonging to a Namboothiri family of priests, he abandoned this life, along with the sacred thread and its material comforts, to become a dirt-poor musician. Directed by Akhil Sathyan, Sarvam Maya (Everything is an Illusion) puts a quandary to him—what if he sees a ghost? Will he, then, believe in god, believe that things which cannot be sensed can exist and apply pressure on our lives, regardless?

For this to happen, the plot conspires to make him, first, return to his hometown in Palakkad. Then, he takes up the priestly profession—not because he believes in the power of ritual, but to while away time and make some money on the side, money that he is always short of. He does the priestly duties with sincerity, but not truth, assisting Roopesh (Aju Varghese). Roopesh, unlike Prabhendu’s father and brother, is a lesser priest and for him, the connection between his priestly duties and his desire to earn money is thicker, almost rendering priesthood with a veneer of comical greed. (Prabhendu’s father and brother, on the other hand, are flown across the country and the world to perform rituals.)

After an exorcism which is successful—to Prabhendu’s shock—strange things happen to him. Someone changes his WhatsApp display picture to a K-pop star. Someone buys clothes using his credit card. These mysteries, terrifying to anyone who holds their privacy sacred, fall less terrifyingly on Pauly’s face which registers it with confusion, not fear. This allows the film’s exaggerations to feel typical, and not scarring the tone of realism.

Soon, it is revealed that it is a ghost behind these antics, the same one Prabhendu helped exorcize—a woman. Only he can see her. Played by Riya Shibu, she does not have any memory of her earthly life, including her name. To make matters easy, they simply call her Delulu. She is chirpy, playful, and despite being a ghost, gets easily scared. She calls Prabhendu ‘Pookie Prabha’. Theirs is a relationship that edges into the territory of siblings, even as the film keeps pushing it towards romance.

Hers is a performance that is immediately jarring—the sprinkling of English vocabulary, Gen-Z lingo, and the playful indifference to those around, unlike the studied manners of everyone else—but eventually it slips under the skin of the film, becoming part of its texture by standing apart, but not necessarily yanking the film apart.

Pookie Prabha’s return to faith, though, is not an absconding from music. The film makes it clear that both will coexist in his life, and Delulu—also a musician in her past life which she cannot recall—helps construct this bridge between his two lives. Here, too, the plot conspires to make him successful by making him jump through hoops of convenience.

Besides, his return to faith is actually a return to his family, to his father, who having aged has softened on him. The family and family profession collapse into a single category that the film is not interested in separating. Can he not return to his Namboothiri family as an atheist?

This is the most tender of the film’s flesh—when Prabhendu enters his father’s room to see him on a ventilator, something he has been on for two years, a fact he should have known, if not helped with. You can see flagellation of regret and the exhaustion of running away in his posture.

The film is tonally spread out between its sub-plots and flashbacks, scenes where horror and comedy are supposed to coexist feel like they overwrite each other clumsily. The logical swerve between Pookie Prabha’s journey towards becoming a musician with a resolved home to return to and Delulu’s supernatural presence, and her journey towards remembering who she was, can feel a bit sharp. The film tries to use the comedy of errors to lubricate these swerves, some of which get exhausting in its repetition. Even Justin Prabhakaran’s typically reliable melodies fall heavily on the film’s surface, sometimes excising it from itself. It is never able to settle into the film’s rhythms.

It is Pauly’s hulking presence and pointed, restrained performance, though, that holds all the strands of genre together. He leans into a scene with a fullness of spirit, inhabiting its eccentricities without it showing on his face. The lack of expression is not a lack of feeling—that is the fragile dance Pauly does successfully, making coherent the scattered landscape of the film’s narrative.