വരത്തൻ aka Foreigner.

It's always the calmest seas that can produce the wildest storms.

Varathan; an unusual name and a name that rings inside you in an off beat, seeking intriguingly for the right note to be heard. It reminiscence of an old elegant wine that had been served in the Malayali households for years, and hardly finds anymore. And like a retro classic that's about to be launched, it takes all the right add-ons; star casting, perfect director, and an exuberant team. And for all its familiarity, it does come as an anti thesis; wrapped and served in a new wine-skin.

It's a complete theater movie, if ever there was a phrase like that. Replicate the movie into the confinements of a living room or a laptop, you meddle with the soul of the brain child the director conceived. The story unfolds slowly from the warmth of city and loved ones into a cold hill station of unfamiliarity. And as the journey reaches touch down, the mood transcends another level.

It wasn't just the hardships of a startup that was waiting ahead, in the moody greens of Idukki an eerie music was on play. The first half holds the viewers on the edge of the seats, in wait for the mystery to unravel itself. The background score coupled with dark cold tone of the visuals instill in us the queer feeling that Priya feels all along.

The movie briefly touches various issues that has grown in our society like weeds; moral policing, slut shaming, patriarchal clichés and so on. At a point in time where rape has become a common news, the movie portrays how sexual frustrations are nursed to point where it leads to assault and violence. Characters Oanth and Johnny Mon shows that these predators come in any age, they devour helpless women with their eyes and muscles. These men then hide behind the masks of moral police and attack those helpless people. Consent has no value, none in front of our educated society.

Even when the movie falls under a survival thriller genre, it beautifully talks about a love story. Abi and Priya are a couple we hardly find, a couple that fell in love and strives to fall over again in love every single day. As they cut their fourth anniversary cake, they look forward to many more years ahead and be a loving couple all throughout.

Varathan has a perfect foreplay that sets up itself to a beautiful orgasmic climax. It's always behind the calmest minds that could forgive the most hides the most explosive ones. Like a volcano it may remain dormant and when it reaches it's might, it erupts with unforgiving vengeance. A true professional, a loving husband and a gentleman became a one man army.

As a viewer, the movie seduced me to believe that there was a dark plot to be unraveled soon. And surprisingly as a perfect anti thesis, it was Fahad's character that took the form. A helpless man crying at the fate of his wife to the sole instigator of payback and a guardian for needy.

Even with all the elements put together, it's love that I ponder about the movie. Abi and Priya, a couple who found each other and for good. It's a closed love story that revolves around each other, there's no one else that could understand them, not even their parents. Nights could be long as it gets, yet they found each other nearby a warm coffee every morning. And there was not a space for any unwelcomed guests, even if it was a cockroach. So they kept their world guarded the British way, with a steel resolve; NO TRESPASSING, VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT, SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.