The Vvaan: Force of the Forest — a fantasy with striking visuals but thinly written bones

The Vvaan, directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and written by Arunabh Kumar, aims to be a fantasy thriller centered on a mythical forest in Devanchal protected by a deity represented as a stone in a temple. The story follows Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra) and his wife Mamta (Tamannah Bhatia), who have struggled with childlessness. The film frames a collision between belief and skepticism, tradition and modernity, but struggles to sustain engagement.

The film begins by laying out the forest's rules, then spends roughly the first 30 minutes on family setup before the main conflict starts. That early stretch contains an unnecessary song sequence and material the reviewer calls filler. Because the central conflict depends on the forest's powers and the deity's influence, the long detour into family dynamics weakens momentum and audience investment.

Rishi is positioned as a staunch atheist while Mamta is a believer. Their opposing outlooks create a simple moral binary: the story clearly pushes toward Rishi's conversion into belief. Each moment that hints at the forest's powers reads as foreshadowing rather than discovery, making the arc feel inevitable and reducing narrative tension.

A parallel comedic subplot follows Ved Prakash (Maniesh Paul). Initially the comic relief works—some sequences and a recurring joke land—but the reviewer finds the track overused. A gag involving a recurring fart joke and an ongoing fear of an elderly woman begins funny and then wears out. Paul's timing is praised, but the comedy's length and repetition drag down the overall pace.

The reviewer highlights that the film contains a visually satisfying extended climactic sequence, but the writing does not match the quality of those visuals. The climax runs over thirty minutes and becomes difficult to sit through because it lacks the narrative clarity and emotional payoff the images suggest. A couple of twists appear in the story, but they don't substantively change the narrative's trajectory.

• Some strong visual ideas in the climactic scenes.
• A few comic moments and small ideas in the comedic track that briefly succeed.

• A slow, overlong setup that delays the central supernatural conflict.
• Predictable character development, especially the atheist-to-believer conversion.
• Repetitive comedy that loses impact through repeated play.
• An extended finale where writing fails to support the visual ambition.

The Vvaan takes a classic nature-versus-modernity premise and struggles to add fresh perspective or surprising developments. Visual strengths and isolated good ideas are undermined by structural choices and predictable storytelling. The result is a film that can look compelling at moments but is hard to fully invest in because the narrative and comic elements don't hold together consistently.