There is something quietly audacious about Sarvam Maya (Everything Is an Illusion). On the surface, it presents itself as a familiar Malayalam genre hybrid: part horror, part comedy, lightly dusted with romance and spiritual inquiry. But beneath its uneven rhythms and occasionally ungainly narrative turns lies a film that wants to ask an old but enduring question in a contemporary key: what happens when belief collides with experience, and certainty meets the inexplicable?
Directed and written by Akhil Sathyan, Sarvam Maya is far from a polished or tightly engineered film. At 2 hours and 27 minutes, it is long, tonally scattered, and frequently indulgent. And yet, it holds together — just about — because of Nivin Pauly’s restrained, poignant central performance, which gives emotional ballast to a story that might otherwise drift away entirely.
An Atheist in a House of Gods
At the centre of Sarvam Maya is Prabhendu, played by Nivin Pauly with a quiet seriousness that immediately sets him apart from the film’s more playful instincts. Prabhendu is an atheist born into a Namboothiri family of priests, a lineage steeped in ritual, orthodoxy, and inherited authority. Rejecting this life early on, he discards both the sacred thread and the material comforts that came with it, choosing instead a life of poverty as a struggling musician.
This is not framed as rebellion in the cinematic sense — there are no dramatic confrontations or fiery speeches. Prabhendu’s rejection of faith feels weary rather than angry, shaped by disillusionment more than defiance. His atheism is not militant; it is tired, habitual, and deeply internalised.
The film’s central provocation emerges from this character foundation: what would it take for someone like Prabhendu to believe again? Not necessarily in god, but in the existence of forces beyond rational perception. What if disbelief is not overturned by doctrine, but by experience?
The Plot Conspires, Literally
For the film’s thought experiment to unfold, the plot must first push Prabhendu back into the very world he escaped. Financial desperation becomes the most convenient lever. He returns to his hometown in Palakkad, and soon enough, he resumes priestly duties — not out of faith, but as a way to earn money and pass time.
This decision is emblematic of Sarvam Maya’s worldview. Ritual, here, is not sacred so much as functional. Prabhendu performs ceremonies with diligence but without belief, treating them as labour rather than spiritual acts. He assists Roopesh (Aju Varghese), a lesser priest whose relationship with religion is framed almost entirely through economics.
Roopesh is an interesting counterpoint. Unlike Prabhendu’s father and brother — elite priests flown across the country and abroad for prestigious rituals — Roopesh occupies the lower rung of the spiritual hierarchy. His faith is inseparable from survival, and the film paints this with a comic brush, giving priesthood a veneer of mild, almost endearing greed.
This contrast subtly exposes the class structure embedded within religious practice, though the film never interrogates it deeply. Instead, it uses Roopesh largely as a source of humour and exposition, allowing Aju Varghese to play within his familiar comic register.
When the Impossible Knocks
The film’s tonal shift arrives with an exorcism scene — a sequence that Prabhendu approaches with professional detachment and ideological scepticism. To his shock, the exorcism appears to work.
What follows is not the usual descent into terror. Instead, Sarvam Maya opts for low-grade, contemporary disturbances: someone changes Prabhendu’s WhatsApp display picture to a K-pop idol; clothes are purchased using his credit card; small invasions of privacy begin to pile up.
These are deeply unsettling violations in the modern world, yet Pauly’s performance registers them with confusion rather than fear. His face rarely contorts into horror; instead, it reflects mild disbelief and irritation. This choice is crucial. By refusing overt terror, the film keeps its exaggerations grounded, preventing its supernatural elements from overwhelming its tonal realism.
Eventually, the truth is revealed: the culprit is a ghost, the same woman Prabhendu helped exorcise. And crucially, only he can see her.
Enter Delulu
Played by Riya Shibu, the ghost — quickly nicknamed Delulu — is where Sarvam Maya becomes most divisive, and occasionally most alive. Delulu has no memory of her earthly life, not even her name. She is chirpy, playful, and paradoxically jumpy for someone already dead. She calls Prabhendu “Pookie Prabha,” flits around spaces unseen by others, and peppers her speech with English phrases and Gen-Z slang.
At first, her presence feels jarring. She does not belong to the same cinematic universe as everyone else. Where Prabhendu and his family operate within a carefully observed social realism, Delulu feels imported from a different, younger, internet-shaped world.
And yet, slowly, she embeds herself into the film’s texture. Rather than tearing the narrative apart, her otherness becomes a feature. She is a ghost not only in a supernatural sense, but in a tonal one — a character who exists slightly out of sync with her surroundings.
The relationship between Prabhendu and Delulu hovers uneasily between siblinghood and romance. The film nudges it toward intimacy, but never commits fully, perhaps unsure of the ethical or emotional implications. This ambiguity works in its favour, allowing the bond to remain tender without becoming uncomfortable.
Music as a Bridge Between Worlds
One of the film’s more thoughtful ideas is its use of music as connective tissue. Delulu, it turns out, was also a musician in her past life — a detail she cannot remember but instinctively feels. Music becomes the bridge between Prabhendu’s two existences: his secular life as an artist and his inherited religious identity.
Importantly, his return to faith is not portrayed as a rejection of music. The film insists that both can coexist, positioning creativity as something neither sacred nor profane, but deeply human. Delulu facilitates this synthesis, helping Prabhendu reconcile the fragments of his identity.
However, the narrative frequently relies on convenient coincidences to advance this arc. Success comes too easily, obstacles dissolve too quickly, and the film often feels like it is nudging its protagonist toward resolution rather than allowing him to arrive there organically.
Faith, Family, and Unasked Questions
Ultimately, Prabhendu’s return to faith is also a return to family. His estrangement from his father — a towering priestly figure — softens as age and illness enter the picture. The film collapses family and profession into a single emotional space, choosing reconciliation over interrogation.
This choice is both tender and evasive. The most emotionally powerful scene in Sarvam Maya occurs when Prabhendu enters his father’s room to find him on a ventilator — a state he has been in for two years, a fact Prabhendu should have known.
Pauly’s physicality here is devastating. His posture carries regret, shame, and the exhaustion of running away. No dialogue is needed; the moment lands with quiet force.
And yet, the film sidesteps an important question: could Prabhendu have returned to his family without returning to faith? The narrative never seriously entertains this possibility, opting instead for emotional resolution over ideological complexity.
Tonal Imbalance and Structural Fatigue
Where Sarvam Maya struggles most is in tone management. Its multiple subplots, flashbacks, and genre elements compete rather than complement one another. Scenes meant to balance horror and comedy often overwrite each other, dulling both effects.
The transition between Prabhendu’s musical journey and Delulu’s supernatural arc can feel abrupt, even abrasive. The film attempts to smooth these shifts with repetitive comedy-of-errors sequences, but repetition eventually breeds fatigue.
Even Justin Prabhakaran’s music, usually a strength, feels strangely detached here. The melodies sit heavily on the film’s surface, occasionally pulling the viewer out of the narrative rather than deeper into it. The score never quite settles into the film’s emotional rhythm, mirroring its larger structural unease.
The Bottom Line
Sarvam Maya is a film of gentle intentions and clumsy execution. It wants to explore belief without dogma, spirituality without certainty, and reconciliation without erasure. It doesn’t always know how to do this cleanly, and its excesses often undermine its subtler insights.
Yet, it endures — largely because of Nivin Pauly, whose performance anchors the film with restraint and empathy. He plays Prabhendu not as a man searching for god, but as someone slowly allowing himself to stop running.
In the end, Sarvam Maya lives up to its title. Everything is an illusion — faith, fear, certainty, even genre. What remains is the human impulse to belong, to reconcile, and to make peace with the contradictions we carry.
Verdict:
A messy, overlong, but sincere horror-comedy, held together by a quietly affecting lead performance and a handful of genuinely tender moments. Flawed, but heartfelt — and worth the patience it asks for.