By Sam Trailerman
Dark is a 2026 Tamil horror film written and directed by debutant Kalyan K Jegan, based on a story by co-producer Ganesh K Babu. The film stars Ajay Karthi in the lead, with Anchana Nethrun, Natty Subramaniam and K. Bhagyaraj in supporting roles.
Music is by Manu Ramesan, cinematography by Ravi Sakthi and editing by Kathiresan Alagesan. It was released in theatres on July 3.
I watched with very little expectation. I ended up with mixed feelings, which honestly fit its 5.9 rating on IMDb perfectly. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s not a memorable one either.
Let me start with what actually works. The core idea is genuinely good. Ajay Karthi plays an atheist who knowingly rents a haunted apartment just because it’s cheap. That’s such a relatable, grounded setup. How many of us haven’t compromised because of rent?
That one line tells you a lot about the character and his worldview, and for a moment I thought we were going to get a smart horror film about logic versus belief. And for the first 30-40 minutes, the film respects that. It doesn’t scream at you. There were no loud jump scares every five minutes, no comedy track that killed the mood, which was a huge relief because Tamil horror usually falls into that trap.
Ravi Sakthi’s cinematography keeps things dark and claustrophobic in a good way. He lets the apartment itself feel like a character — quiet, dusty, always a little too empty.
Manu Ramesan’s background score also stays restrained. It builds dread instead of just making noise.
Then there’s K. Bhagyaraj. The film opens with a milkman finding his lifeless body on a couch, and knowing this turned out to be his last film before his passing makes that scene incredibly hard to watch. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but he brings certain gravity. His presence alone makes you want to take the film more seriously. You feel the loss more than the film actually earns.
Now for where it stumbles.
For all that good setup, the film slowly forgets what it wanted to be. That interesting atheist-vs-supernatural angle is dropped almost completely after the first act. It becomes a very standard haunted-house story that we have seen many times before. The rules of the haunting are never clear. Why this
house? Why this person? What does the ghost actually want? The film never bothers to answer.
The second half introduces a police investigation led by Natty Subramaniam. On paper it should add
tension, but in reality, it just feels like filler. Most of that track is just exposition being dumped right before the climax. It doesn’t build suspense; it just explains things the story should have shown us earlier.
The writing is the biggest letdown. Characters do things without proper motivation. Scenes start and end without a payoff. I kept asking myself — what was the director really trying to say? Was this about grief, about faith, about guilt? That intention never becomes clear. You can forgive a horror film for not being 100 per cent logical, but you can’t forgive it for not being engaging.
The final twist, which the film banks on heavily, does land to some extent. It does give you a jolt and it’s probably the only part you’ll remember. But a twist alone can’t save a film if the journey to it feels empty.
In the end, Dark feels like a film that had the right ideas during the writing stage but lost them during execution. It’s not loud or cheap, and that honesty deserves credit. It tries to be a different kind of horror film with some genuine suspense. But it also ends up being disappointingly ordinary.
If you are a fan of slow-burn horror and want to watch Bhagyaraj, it’s worth a one-time watch on OTT. Don’t expect a path-breaking horror film. Just watch it as a flawed but sincere attempt, and you might not be too disappointed.
WE