Euphoria movie review: A gut-punch of a film that refuses to look away | Malayalam News
Euphoria movie review: After the high-profile misfire of Shaakuntalam, director Gunasekhar makes a sharp pivot with Euphoria, a grounded, youth-centric social drama that moves away from the big-scale, VFX-heavy spectacles he was previously known for. The result is a film that is undeniably sincere in its ambitions.
At the heart of the film is a bright young woman, played by Sara Arjun, with dreams of cracking the civil services exam. Her world collapses after she falls into the trap of substance abuse following a fateful party. Alongside her story runs another painful thread. Bhumika Chawla portrays a mother watching helplessly as her own son destroys himself through drugs. Together, these two arcs paint a disturbing picture of how addiction, crime, and moral decay are tearing families apart in modern urban India. The film doesn’t shy away from touching on sensitive subjects like violence against women, child protection laws, and the growing drug menace in the city.
This is a film with an iron spine. It picks a stance on every issue it raises and never deviates from it, not for commercial convenience, not for audience comfort. The writing is sharp and loaded with hard-hitting dialogues that land like punches, particularly in the courtroom and confrontation sequences.
The opening hour is where Gunasekhar is at his sharpest. The pacing is tight, the tension builds effectively, and viewers are drawn into the world without much setup. What truly sets Euphoria apart from other message-driven films is how it handles the idea of second chances. We’ve all heard the saying that everybody deserves a second chance, this film grabs that platitude by the collar and forces you to confront what it actually looks like in practice. When the person seeking redemption is someone who has committed the unforgivable. When the victim has to exist in the same world as her abusers being given another shot at life. Gunasekhar doesn’t offer easy answers. He shows us the messy, gut-wrenching reality of what redemption costs, and who pays the price. Watching how each character navigates their second chance forms the gripping backbone of the latter half, and it adds layers to the film that genuinely shake you. You’ll find yourself questioning your own beliefs about justice, forgiveness, and whether some lines, once crossed, can ever truly be redrawn.
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A significant portion of the film’s dialogue is built around parental responsibility, and refreshingly, Gunasekhar doesn’t take the lazy route of placing all the blame on the mother, a tired trope that Indian cinema has leaned on for decades. Here, fathers are held equally accountable. Absent fathers, emotionally unavailable fathers, fathers who throw money at their children instead of time, the film points fingers in every direction that deserves it. It’s a welcome and long-overdue shift that adds real substance to the conversation the film is trying to start.
The performances across the board are exceptional. Newcomer Vignesh Gavireddy holds his own impressively for a debut, carrying the emotional weight of his character with surprising maturity. Through his character, we witness the complete unraveling of a young life enslaved by drugs. We see the highs that seduce him in, the crushing lows that follow, and the slow descent of a boy into a convict. Gunasekhar doesn’t just show us this journey; he makes us feel every flicker of emotion along the way. The desperation, the shame, the brief moments of clarity drowned out by the next fix. For a debut performance, Gavireddy carries this devastating arc with a maturity that’s nothing short of remarkable. You don’t just watch his fate unfold, you live it with him.
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Bhumika Chawla’s comeback to Tollywood feels meaningful here; she brings a quiet devastation to her role as a broken mother. Sara Arjun, riding high on the sucess of Dhurandhar, makes a strong impression in her crucial part, and the audience clearly connects with her presence. Gautham Vasudev Menon, playing the investigating cop, does complete justice to his role, measured, intense, and convincingly authoritative. Kaala Bhairava deserves special mention, his score gives the film an edgy, almost hallucinatory texture that perfectly matches the subject.
Most of the film is presented with an almost documentary-like realism, no unnecessary melodrama, no Tollywood-style fluff. Gunasekhar lets uncomfortable truths breathe on screen without diluting them for palatability. This is both the film’s greatest strength and the reason some viewers might find the runtime demanding. At two and a half hours, it does feel long in stretches. But every scene that might test your patience is in service of something essential, whether it’s exploring parental responsibility in a world that moves too fast for families to keep up, or showing how thin the line between innocence and destruction has become for today’s generation. There are also moments where the social messaging becomes a bit preachy, which is a trap many message-driven Telugu films fall into. Make no mistake, this film will make you deeply uncomfortable. And that’s entirely the point.
Gunasekhar proves that he still has the ability to craft powerful cinema when he strips everything down to raw storytelling, strong performances, and a message that matters. Flawed in pacing, perhaps, but fearless in its conviction.
Euphoria movie cast: Bhumika Chawla, Vignesh Gavireddy, Sara Arjun
Euphoria movie director: Gunasekhar
Euphoria movie ratings: 4 stars
