Aaro Review: A 20-Minute Movie That Feels Like A 2-Hour Existential Fog
Ranjith’s Aaro arrives with the promise of mystery, rain, nostalgia, and, of course, the mandatory Malayalam-writer starter pack: cigarettes, booze, and a house that looks like it inherited trauma from three generations. If you removed these elements, I’m not convinced anyone in the film industry would know how to portray a “writer” anymore.
Yes, it’s produced by Mammootty Kampany. And yes, the cinematography is good enough to make even a pile of unwashed plates look poetic.
But did the film actually say something? Well… let’s look.
Shyamaprasad plays a writer who has absolutely zero interest in writing. Instead, he drifts around the house like a ghost who missed his own funeral, chain-smokes like his lungs personally offended him, drinks as if creativity only arrives after three pegs, and waits for inspiration.
If writers all functioned like this, every book would arrive 15 years late, handwritten, and smelling of Old Monk.
And then comes the rain, Kerala’s most overworked character.
Oh, look—it’s raining. Again. Which means something tragic or romantic or symbolic or hallucinatory or vaguely philosophical is supposed to happen.
Except here, the rain does something new. It becomes a plot device for a cardiac episode disguised as nostalgia.
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Then comes Manju Warrier, graceful, serene, and slightly too perfect to be real. Manju Warrier enters the frame with a quiet elegance, moving through the house like a memory returning at the exact wrong or right moment. She gently points out what has changed over the years, which is adorable… except none of it actually happened.
Her character is so ethereal that the film itself seems to whisper, “Bro, she’s not real. She’s literally your brain trying to comfort you mid–heart attack.”And honestly, that’s the most interesting theory in the whole film.
The fact that Aaro looks stunning is the film’s biggest scandal. It is one of the most beautifully crafted short films in recent memory, which also somehow manages to feel directionless, sleepy, and emotionally out of reach.
This is like going to a five-star restaurant, receiving a dish plated like art, and then realising the chef forgot to add salt. Or vegetables. Or seasoning. Or a point.
Prasanth Raveendran’s frames? Brilliant.Bijibal’s score? Delicate and haunting.The set design? A cluttered masterpiece.The story? Like opening a gift box and finding tax receipts inside.
The real plot twist, writers apparently cannot function without nicotine. Aaro seems extremely committed, almost worryingly so, to the belief that a writer must be a person with addictive habits, a tragic backstory, and at least one emotionally unavailable woman haunting his past. If this stereotype were any more tired, it would need a bed.
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The film ends with a question mark or maybe several, depending on your patience. Is she real? Is he hallucinating? Is this a love story? Is he dying?
Is this all just a prolonged fever dream caused by eating leftovers from 2017?
The film refuses to clarify. So why doesn’t Aaro work? Because it confuses abstraction with depth. It assumes the audience will be impressed merely by rain, books, and a lonely protagonist. Because it forgets that mood is not a substitute for story. And its most interesting idea (a hallucination during near-death) is never fully explored.
Aaro is a beautiful painting hung in a room with no furniture. Watch it for the visuals, the score, the aesthetics, and Manju Warrier’s graceful presence. But in terms of narrative satisfaction? You might walk away feeling like the protagonist himself, lonely, confused, and wondering what exactly just happened.
Aaro wants to be haunting. It ends up being haunted by its own ambition. But at least the rain looked amazing.
