Set for theatrical release on September 25, 2026, The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest is directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and Arunabh Kumar, and stars Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia alongside Sunil Grover, Maniesh Paul, Shweta Tiwari and Anup Soni. Backed by Balaji Telefilms and TVF Motion Pictures, the Hindi film places a supernatural conflict inside a culturally rooted landscape shaped by forest mythology, devotional practice and the tension between inherited belief and modern scepticism.
The Vvaan: Plot
The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest follows a rational, city bred man who returns to his ancestral village carrying the distance and disbelief of urban life. In a place where memory, ritual and caution still shape everyday conduct, he dismisses local warnings about a forbidden and cursed forest as superstition. That sceptical position becomes the story’s entry point into a world where logic is no longer enough.
The central turn arrives when he enters the sacred woods despite a strict code that forbids anyone from stepping inside after sunset. The warning, “Suryast ke baad, Vvaan mein pravesh karna varjit hai,” is not treated as a decorative line of folklore but as the boundary between the visible and the unknowable. Once that line is crossed, the film opens into an ancient supernatural conflict involving a divine goddess, a hidden history and forces that do not submit to rational explanation.
From there, the narrative expands from personal doubt into collective danger. The protagonist is pulled toward a destiny larger than his own will, and the story gradually recasts him from detached outsider to reluctant warrior. The village, the forest and the mythological forces surrounding the Van Devi legend all begin to converge, turning what begins as an act of arrogance into a test of courage, faith and belonging.
What gives the plot its shape is the way the supernatural is tied to place. The forest is not only a setting for jump scares or atmospheric spectacle. It is the keeper of memory, punishment and revelation. As secrets of the jungle begin to unfold, the film positions the natural world as both sacred presence and narrative threat. The Bhutakkas, the unexplained force moving through the woods and the buried conflict that connects past and present all deepen the sense that this is a world built on transgression and consequence.
The plot also folds in family emotion and the village versus city divide with enough clarity to keep the larger mythology accessible. The protagonist’s return is not just a geographical shift. It becomes a confrontation with an inheritance he has refused to take seriously. That thread allows the film to connect folklore with contemporary emotional realities, including family fracture, cultural distance and the uneasy place of tradition in present day life. The romance track and the lighter interactions between characters soften the darker supernatural atmosphere without derailing the main conflict.
Most importantly, the film’s engagement with Chhath and devotional imagery gives the plot a specific cultural energy. The ritual texture is woven into the story as part of its moral and spiritual framework. Bhakti and shakti are not merely thematic labels here. They inform the emotional logic of the conflict and the protagonist’s transformation as he moves from denial to recognition.
The Vvaan: Performance
Sidharth Malhotra carries the film with an approach that suits its transformation arc. He begins from a place of urban detachment and controlled disbelief, then gradually shifts into a more emotionally open and physically charged performance as the supernatural conflict closes in. That transition gives him room to explore vulnerability, confusion and heroic intensity within the same role. The part benefits from his screen presence, especially once the character is forced to respond to forces he can no longer dismiss.
Tamannaah Bhatia brings steadiness and emotional warmth to the film. In a narrative crowded with lore, mystery and spectacle, she helps maintain a human anchor. Her chemistry with Malhotra gives the romantic thread enough feeling to matter, and the pairing feels fresh within the Hindi mainstream landscape. She also fits comfortably inside the film’s rooted cultural environment, which is important for a story so dependent on mood and place.
Sunil Grover provides one of the more intriguing energies in the cast. His role introduces a welcome unpredictability, and the performance gains strength from how he resists easy signaling. There is tension in the way he withholds, allowing the eventual reveal to land with greater force. It is a part that works precisely because Grover does not chase effect too loudly.
Maniesh Paul supplies the film’s lighter rhythm. His exchanges with Malhotra bring humour that feels integrated into character interaction rather than inserted as separate comic business. In a story dealing with dread, faith and supernatural danger, that tonal release matters. Paul’s presence helps the first half move with entertainment value and keeps the film connected to mainstream accessibility.
Shweta Tiwari and Anup Soni strengthen the supporting framework. Both actors bring weight and credibility to the family and community dimension of the narrative, helping the village world feel inhabited by lived relationships rather than plot functions. The supporting cast overall contributes to the density of the folklore driven universe.
The Vvaan: Analysis
The Vvaan’s most notable achievement lies in its attempt to carve out a folklore fantasy world that feels recognisably Indian without reducing culture to visual garnish. Deepak Kumar Mishra and Arunabh Kumar approach the material with a clear interest in balancing scale with rootedness. The atmosphere of the forest, the devotional texture surrounding Chhath, and the tension between belief and modern rationality all give the film an identity that is distinct within recent Hindi genre filmmaking.
The writing is strongest when it trusts the emotional and mythic pull of its central premise. A city bred sceptic returning to an ancestral landscape and waking forces older than his understanding is a robust setup, and the screenplay finds dramatic value in that collision. The narrative’s engagement with Bihar rooted folklore, Van Devi mythology and sacred prohibitions gives it a lived cultural framework. The nature conservation thread also works because it is embedded in the spiritual relationship between people and land, not attached as an external lesson.
At the same time, the screenplay is not always equally disciplined in how it distributes information. The mystery is compelling when it unfolds through atmosphere, behaviour and gradual revelation, but less effective when explanation begins to dominate momentum. Some passages in the latter portions feel over articulated, as though the writing does not fully trust the audience to remain inside the mythology without verbal reinforcement. A tighter script would have allowed the climax to land with greater force.
Visually, the film appears designed for theatrical scale. The forest is treated as a dramatic organism, carrying danger, beauty and secrecy within the same frame. That environmental weight is crucial because the story depends on the jungle becoming an active participant in the conflict. The animation used in the Bhutakkas backstory is another smart creative choice. It freshens exposition and gives the mythology a stylised storytelling texture that stands apart from the live action world without feeling disconnected from it.
The music broadens the tonal register effectively. Songs like Samjho Na, Chhathi Maiya and Thummak Thummak suggest the range the film is trying to cover, from romance and devotion to high energy entertainment. That multi tonal structure is ambitious, and while not every shift is equally seamless, the film does succeed in creating a 360 degree entertainer that wants humour, mystery, faith, emotion and spectacle to coexist inside one cinematic frame.
The Vvaan: Verdict
The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest is at its most interesting when it leans into the cultural specificity of its folklore and lets the forest, the rituals and the supernatural dread shape the experience. It has the ambition of a large screen fantasy entertainer, but its strongest identity comes from the smaller and more rooted details of belief, family inheritance and regional myth. Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia give the film a stable centre, while Sunil Grover and Maniesh Paul help widen its tonal range.
The film does not completely avoid the familiar strain of over explanation that often weakens ambitious genre cinema, and a more tightly written latter half would have made the mystery more potent. Even so, the combination of atmosphere, cultural texture, visual scale and emotional accessibility gives it a distinctive place in contemporary Hindi fantasy storytelling. This is a film that understands spectacle, but also understands that spectacle matters more when it grows from faith, fear and memory.
The Vvaan: Rating
Critics Rating: 3.5/5
Box Office Rating: 3/5
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