The Vvaan review: Sidharth Malhotra's folk thriller gets lost in its own myths

We have always been drawn to stories about what might be hiding in the woods. Tell us there is a goddess guarding a village, a forest nobody must enter after sunset and something ancient lurking among the trees, and curiosity does the rest. Indian folklore has been feeding that curiosity for generations, building worlds where faith, fear and superstition happily live side by side. The Vvaan: Force of the Forest walks into this wonderfully fertile territory with a premise that sounds far more haunting than what eventually unfolds on screen.The film takes us to Devanchal, where Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra) and his wife, Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia) return for Chhath Puja and a family land dispute. But there is more weighing on them than ancestral property. Six years ago, Mamta lost her unborn baby when she was seven months pregnant. Since then, the couple have tried Ayurveda, naturopathy, homoeopathy and almost everything else in the hope of having a child.Rishi, once a believer in Van Devi, has since turned into a rationalist, seemingly having lost his faith somewhere along with his child. So when he returns to a village where belief is woven into everyday life, the stage is set for something emotionally rich. And The Vvaan does briefly find that emotional core.Devanchal has one rule: never enter the forest after sunset. According to an old legend, unnatural forces (phuddakke) entered the region centuries ago and began terrorising the villagers. A king built a shrine to Van Devi, who created a protective boundary around the village and trapped these forces inside the forest. There is also a bracelet, believed to have been gifted by the goddess to the king, which allows his rightful heir, or uttaradhikari, to enter the forest unharmed after dark. Naturally, Rishi gets involved. When a villager's ox wanders into the forest, he goes after it and returns safely. For Rishi, this is proof that there is no supernatural force at work. For the villagers, it is proof that he could be the chosen descendant. The irony is delicious: the man who has rejected faith becomes the very person others see as its evidence.This should have been the film's emotional spine. Rishi's journey from belief to grief-induced disbelief and then back towards the supernatural has all the ingredients of a compelling character story. There is a man who has lost something precious, a village asking him to believe again and a mythology that refuses to stay buried. Unfortunately, Vvaan keeps wandering away from this promising conflict. The screenplay piles on one idea after another. Deepak (Sunil Grover), a powerful local figure, wants a road built through the area in the name of development. Rishi initially supports him, while his elder brother (Anup Soni) and other villagers fear that disturbing the forest could unleash whatever has been trapped there. It is a potentially interesting collision between modern development and inherited belief, but the film never gives it enough room to breathe.Deepak's own story soon takes over. His father is revealed to be the rightful bearer of the bracelet, and Deepak kills him to claim it. He enters the forest, meets the leader of the dark force and agrees to let the entity possess him. Once that happens, the film changes gears. The eerie folk tale becomes a noisy battle between good and evil, complete with escalating deaths, chaos in the village and an eventual attack on Van Devi's shrine.The problem isn't that the film becomes bigger. It is that it becomes less interesting. Whenever the mystery starts taking shape, the screenplay feels compelled to explain it. Directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and Arunabh Kumar, the more Vvaan tells us about its mythology, the less mysterious the forest becomes. By the time Rishi and Deepak are facing off in a rather bizarre mid-air sequence, the film has travelled a considerable distance from the unsettling story it seemed to promise at the beginning.The forest itself is a missed opportunity. A place everyone fears entering after dark should feel like a character in its own right. Instead, Dev Van rarely feels genuinely threatening. The background score works overtime to manufacture tension, particularly during the forest sequences, but sometimes the music announces the fear before the scene has earned it.The VFX are another weak link. Several of the supernatural creatures look stiff and overly digital, taking away from the sense of danger. You can see the scale the film is aiming for, but the effects often make its fantasy world feel less believable rather than more.Interestingly, the film's most convincing world-building comes during the Chhath portions. The rituals are allowed space and texture, and the scenes feel lived-in rather than inserted simply for visual flavour. Mamta's devotion to Chhathi Maiya gives Tamannaah some of her strongest moments, too. There is genuine tenderness in her longing to become a mother again, even when the screenplay doesn't always know how to use that emotion.Tamannaah plays Mamta with sincerity, while Sidharth keeps Rishi rational and grounded. Yet both actors are fighting a screenplay that doesn't give their relationship or emotional journey enough space. Their chemistry is functional, but at times it feels as though the writing is trying harder than the actors to establish their bond.Sunil Grover makes a committed attempt to shed his comic persona and play a darker character. Deepak, however, becomes predictable once his larger role is revealed. Anup Soni and Shweta Tiwari are dependable but underused. Manish Paul, as Rishi's camera-carrying friend VP, is the film's more unexpected pleasure. His jokes can be silly - occasionally very silly - but he delivers them with enough conviction to squeeze laughs out of scenes that otherwise feel heavy. What makes The Vvaan frustrating is that there is a good folk tale buried somewhere underneath all this. A goddess, a forbidden forest, an ancient bloodline, a grieving couple and a village caught between faith and modernity: the ingredients are right there. The film simply keeps adding to the pot instead of letting the original flavours come through.There are moments in The Vvaan: Force of the Forest when you can see the film it wanted to be - atmospheric, rooted in folklore and genuinely eerie. But just when it begins to pull you in, it adds another twist, another explanation or another burst of spectacle.For those who enjoy Indian folklore and supernatural stories, there is enough here to make for a one-time watch. But the film leaves you with a strange feeling: the forest you imagined while listening to its legend is much scarier than the one you eventually see on screen.- Ends