THE GHOST WHISPERER

RAHUL SADASIVAN, THE MILD-MANNERED FILMMAKER BEHIND BHOOTHAKALAM AND DIES IRAE, HAS BUILT A CAREER OUT OF FEAR — AND FOUND HIS VOICE IN THE DARK

- BY VISHAL MENON

Rahul Sadasivan laughs easily. The 38-year-old filmmaker and screenwriter from Palakkad is the kind of friend who keeps the group entertained, the “clown of the gang,” as he puts it. Which is why most people who know him can’t quite believe that this same man is behind some of the darkest, most unsettling images in Malayalam cinema.

With Bhoothakalam (2022), Bramayugam (2024) and now Dies Irae (2025), Sadasivan has become Malayalam cinema’s unexpected master of horror. His latest, Dies Irae — a haunting, slow-burn descent into fear — confirms that audiences are ready for horror that doesn’t rely on jump scares, but on emotion, stillness and atmosphere.

It wasn’t always this way. Sadasivan no longer even has a copy of his first film, Red Rain (2013). “Someone asked for the digital rights recently,” he says, smiling. “That’s when I realised I may have thrown it out.”

He was only 24 when he made that film — straight out of the London Film School and full of ideas about aliens landing in a small Kerala village. But the high-concept Malayalam sci-fi flick didn’t quite land. “When it failed, I felt like I’d let myself and my family down,” he says. What followed were nine long years of near-misses and rejection. “There aren’t many producers or actors I didn’t meet to pitch a script. Nothing worked out.”

A Shift in Fear

The turning point came when Sadasivan decided to realign not just his scripts, but his sensibility. “At the time of