The Kerala Story – My Flash Review!

The Kerala Story was released in theatres in May 2023. Yet, it found its way on OTT just recently. The reasons for this are not unfathomable. This film is reportedly based on real-life stories of Hindu/Christian girls from North Kerala getting radicalised and taken to Syria as part of an ISIS master plan. To a large extent, the treatment of this subject is very close to that of The Kashmir Files just that the latter looked more authentic.

The subject matter of the film is quite serious. The story revolves around a bunch of girls who land up in a nursing college in Kasargod in North Kerala. In a telling scene right at the beginning, one of the girls, Shalini Unnikrishnan from Trivandrum (yes, she is a Tambrahm and so should be seen wearing “malli poo” in her hair all the time as per the established standards of Bollywood!), enters the college campus, what she sees are posters and writings on the wall that say stuff like “Free Kashmir” and “Kill Indian Imperialism” etc.  Sadly, she doesn’t see the writing on the wall! The rest of the movie is about how this girl and two of her friends are targeted and systematically trapped as part of a larger conspiracy. This conspiracy involves friendship, inter-religious love, deceit, Drugs, sexual abuse, radicalisation, misuse of religion and export to Syria.

The theme of this film is similar to the web series – The Freelancer, where the focus is on how the girl is brought back with the help of a network of covert operators. Here, the focus is more on how girls get trapped and emotionally destroyed.

We all have been hearing horror stories of conversion, radicalisation and penetration of the Islamic State in North Kerala for some time now. Towards the end, we are shown the visuals of the real-life characters, which gives us the idea that the film is indeed based on real-life horror stories. The disconnect, however, is in portraying the extent of the problem. During the film promotions, the makers gave a number of 30000 girls who have been converted and sent to Syria. I remember most of the critics panning this film because of the exaggeration of the problem. But I feel that even if the number is just 30, the story needs to be told. Just like The Kashmir Files.

Coming to the screenplay, Director Sudipto Sen and his writing team of Satyapal Singh and Vipul Shah choose to make the narrative one-dimensional – in the sense that the film borders on being Islamophobic and, therefore, propagandist. The narrative style is non-linear, starting with the present, where the girl Shalini is being interrogated for being an ISIS terrorist. As she tells her chilling story of how she landed in Syria, the scene shifts to the immediate past in Syria in the confines of ISIS militants and earlier past in India.  The film spends a lot of time on how actual indoctrination happens, and I felt it was going a bit overboard. I am not aware if this is what happened to those girls in real life, too. If it was, then it is scary and needs to be exposed.

Some of the scenes in the film are visually too disturbing and, therefore, not suitable for watching for minors. Even without these graphic visuals, one could understand and appreciate the gravity and the magnitude of the issue. By making it not watchable universally, the makers have lost a great opportunity in not getting the message across to young adults for whom the film is a must-watch.

Adah Sharma plays the role of Shalini, the female lead. As one who gets mired innocently in devious circumstances in the ISIS conspiracy and yet shows courage to wriggle out of the hole, Sharma does her role intensely. Her hard work shows how she gets the “Malluised” Hindi rendition almost correct throughout. Yogita Bihani, who plays the role of her friend and part of the conspiracy gang, is also good with her portrayal.

I would have liked the film to be faster-paced and gripping in its storytelling.  The film is a must but disturbing watch for the gravity of the theme. I would have ideally liked this film to have been made as a documentary with authentic characters, settings, facts and figures that would have created mass awareness. By being wholly propagandist, it lost an opportunity.  I would really like to hear how a person living in Kerala sees the film.

Its streaming now Zee5.