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June 1, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Abishan Jeevinth
Telugu with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Bhairavam” (a remake of the 2024 film “Garudan”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Three best friends experience violent power struggles over control of a sacred temple and the land around the temple.
Culture Audience: “Bhairavam” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, “Garudan” and predictable action movies about loyalties and betrayals among family members and friends.
“Bhairavam” is a stale and clumsy story of three best friends and betrayals over control of a scared temple. This bloated and repetitive Telugu remake of the Tamil film “Garudan” is just a dull collection of violent fights and vapid acting performances. The movie’s song-and-dance numbers are mediocre and unnecessary.
Written and directed by Vijay Kanakamedala, “Bhairavam” is an inferior remake of the 2023’s “Garudan,” which was written and directed by R. S. Durai Senthilkumar. ” The plot is essentially the same for both movies, but “Bhairavam” is soulless and offers very little to care about the main characters. As is the case with many terrible action movies, “Bhairavam” (which translates to “fearsome” or “terrible” in English) tries to overcompensate for its monotnous story by having obnoxiously loud blaring of the movie’s score music and sound mixing.
“Bhairavam” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India) begins with an introduction explaining a Varahi Amman temple has been desecrated by various robberies. The trustee of the temple is Nagaratnamma (played by Jayasudha), who is the elderly matriarch of her family. Nagaratnamma expects that after she dies, the someone else in her family will take over the trusteeship of the temple.
Meanwhile, a circle inspector named Pardha Sarathi (played by Sampath Raj), who has 20 years of experience as police law enforcement, announces to his supervisor that he’s resigning from his job three months ahead of schedule. He says he wants to take this retirement early because he no longer feels proud to serve on the police force. Pardha says he blames one person for this disillusionment.
“Bhairavam” then does a flashback to three months earlier to show the events leading up t Pardha deciding to going to retirement earlier than he originally planned. The story focuses on three men who have been friends with each other since childhood. All three men experience various tests of their friendships and get entangled in power struggles over the temple after Nagaratnamma dies.
These are the three friends who are at the center of the story:
- Gajapathi Varma (played by Manchu Manoj) is the affluent grandson of Nagaratnamma. He is the most ruthless and the most aggressive of the three friends. In the beginning of the story, Gajapathi and his wife Neelima (played by Anandhi) are childless and have been trying to have their first child.
- Varadha (played by Nara Rohith) can be a good guy, but he flip-flops on his morality and loyalty to others, depending what will serve him best. He owns a successful company called Varadha Imports and is happily married to his devoted wife Poornima (played by Divya Pillai), who. Varadha and Poornima have two children: a son in his early teens and a daughter who’s about 5 or 6 years old.
- Seenu (played by Sai Srinivas Bellamkonda) is the most ethical and compassionate of the three friends. Seenu was an orphan boy who met Gajapathi when Seenu saved Gajapathi’s life. A grateful Nagaratnamma then adopted Seenu, who is portrayed from the beginning as the obvious “hero” of the story.
As adults, Gajapathi (who is vengeful and has a nasty temper) does not treat Seenu as an equal member of his family. Seenu works in a low-level job for Gajapathi. Seenu has a working-class lifestyle, which is in contrast to the more upscale lifestyles of Gajapathi and Varadha. Seenu is a bachelor, but he invetiably gets a love interest. Her name is Vennela (played by Aditi Shankar), who is opinionated and flirtatious, but she’s not given much to do except go on dates with Gajapathi and dance with him in the movie’s musical numbers.
After the death of Nagaratnamma, there’s a power struggle over who will take ownership of the temple and its valuable surrounding property. A corrupt politician named Minister Vedurupalli Venkateshwara Rao (played by Sharath Lohitashwa) wants to take control. He enlists the help of his brother-in-law Nagaraju (played by Ajay), also known as Theatre, who is a somewhat bumbling criminal.
The brutal and vicious tones of the fight scenes are awkwardly mixed with some comedy that and light-hearted musical numbers that don’t fit well in the movie at all. A somewhat dorky police inspector named Sundarachari (played by Vennela Kishore) has a small role in the movie not because the Sundarachari is needed for the movie’s plot but because it looks like the filmmakers just wanted to put Kishore in the movie for some mindless comic relief.
The most impressive aspects of “Bhairavam” are the movie’s cinematography and production design, which make “Bhairavam” look very stylish. Too bad the story and acting don’t match. The movie’s visual effects are serviceable, but the over-the-top and unrealistic action sequences just mind-numbing and quite dull after a while.
Ultimately, the characters and performances in the very uneven “Bhairavam” just aren’t very appealing. Seenu is supposed to be “heroic” but he’s personality has no depth. And at 140 minutes, “Bhairavam” is entirely too long for a story that looks like a very uninspired rehash of any overblown action film about greed and revenge plots.
Prathyangira Cinemas released “Bhairavam” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on May 30, 2025.