Folklore’s free-willed night-walker becomes a marketable avenger

History is being written in Malayalam cinema. Kalyani Priyadarshan’s ‘Lokah’, a woman-led film, has swept into the 250-crore club, the first in an industry still scarred by the actress assault case and its aftermath.

With technical finesse and an ensemble of stars from Dulquer Salmaan to Tovino Thomas, the film showcases the industry’s star power and craft. The applause rises, the hashtags multiply, the box office roars. Yet when the lights dim and the shimmer fades, one question lingers like an unfinished story: do we dare to look past the glitter and into the shadows cinema conceals? Feared and fascinating in equal measure, Kalliyankattu Neeli, a mythical figure rooted in Kerala’s folklore, is one of the state’s most infamous spirits.

She has survived centuries through Villadichan Paattu (ballads) and oral tales from Travancore. One of Kerala’s popular myths tells of Alli, the daughter of a wealthy devadasi whose gold drew envy and desire. Betrayed and murdered by Nambi, the Brahmin priest she loved, though he loved only her wealth, she was transformed into Kalliyankattu Neeli.

Now a vengeful yakshi, she haunts the Kalliyankadu forest, her beauty a deadly lure, sinking her fangs into men and sucking their blood, leaving only terror in her wake.

Yet folklore offers another version of Neeli: the free-willed night-walker who refused to be caged by society’s moral fences, who owned her desire to live life to the fullest, including the condemned three-letter word ‘SEX,’ without shame, and who was eventually contained and impaled by Kadamattathu Kathanar, the Christian priest.Here lies the split in Neeli’s story and in how we see women. One version demonizes her as excess, lust, and vengeance; the other offers a radical image of freedom, sexuality, and refusal to conform.

She remains a contested figure, embodying both society’s fear of women’s desire and their fight for autonomy. Neeli’s tale is as much about caste as it is about gender.‘Lokah’ attempts to reimagine this myth, but not without erasure. On screen, Neeli becomes little Neeli, bitten by a bat, transformed into a blood-soaked avenger fighting the caste oppressors who destroyed her kin. The film proudly wears caste oppression and discrimination as its politics, issues urgent and real, but quietly erases Neeli’s sexuality, desire, and freedom.

Caste becomes the headline; gender is the footnote.That is the trick of today’s ‘conscious’ cinema. It markets social sensitivity, packages subaltern anger and wins accolades, while sanitizing the parts of women’s stories that disturb the order of things. The irony is sharp: cinema claims to celebrate women’s strength while erasing the messy, defiant and joyful dimensions of real lives. Silverscreen, however, rarely tolerates such raw power.The ‘Lokah’ promo song, shared by co-writer Santhy Balachandran, promises to celebrate radical female freedom and multiplicity of identity, yet confines womanhood to modern, palatable sensibilities. Rebellion is sanitized into acceptable vengeance, moral ambiguity erased, and non-binary or trans experiences ignored. What claims to be a radical anthem instead reproduces binaries and containment.The free-willed Neeli of folklore, chaotic and uncontained, is replaced by a marketable superhero-vampire.

Generations may remember only the girl bitten by a bat, not the night walker who lived outside shame. Cinema tidies up women’s messy, defiant lives, controlled by Moothon and countless other men, so they fit the frame.In flashbacks, through pigeonholed semiotics, Neeli’s indigenous roots are clear, the tattoos, attire and temple restrictions.Yet as she grows into Chandra, she becomes a fair-skinned, slightly tanned woman.

Is she hiding her origins to fit into a society that rewards privilege and whiteness? Aleena, poet and writer, reflects, “In her post, Santhy talks about imbibing the idea of a ‘fallen goddess.’ I would argue that Neeli in ‘Lokah’ is actually a representation of Savarna womanhood: the guardian of the bloodline, whose purity must not be ‘tainted,’ which is why such women are considered Goddesses.

”“The makers clearly have no understanding of how to build an Adivasi woman character.

Dalit women, or Adivasi women, never challenge the caste hierarchy. They are violated, dominated, and marginalized. They are not Goddesses. They do not ‘fall from grace’ because they were never granted any sanctity or purity in the first place. Yet, when creating an Adivasi character, the filmmakers view her through a Savarna lens.

Making Neeli an Adivasi woman in “Lokah” feels tokenistic. Real struggles— loss of land, language, water, shelter—none of this is addressed.”Casting Kalyani, an upper-caste actress, adds another layer of erasure. Critics call this “blackfishing”: fair-skinned actors altered to play marginalized roles, sidelining talented darker-skinned performers and exploiting their aesthetics for profit.“I have absolutely nothing to say about the representation of tribal communities or black-skinned girls in Malayalam cinema,” says Arati MR, researcher on black politics, “because clearly, it’s just as wonderfully ironic as the fact that even superheroines have to hide their roots to be accepted.”The conventional superhero model, which equates heroism with violence, has long faced criticism for its lack of realism, consequences and nuanced representation. Critics like Stephen King have called the spectacle of destruction “pornographic,” detached from real human suffering and potentially harmful for children, who may internalize aggression as heroic. Male superheroes dominate acts of violence, while female heroes are often forced into the same mold.

‘Lokah’ illustrates this tension: its rising superwoman is shoehorned into a conventional, aggression-driven framework, while the villain embodies a patriarchal mindset, punishing women simply for moving freely. Yet counter-violence is never the solution.“I was happy for Kalyani, who got so much screen space, but sad for Neeli turned Chandra, bitter, surrounded only by men, with no female bonding. She could have been happier if she knew the strength of women supporting each other.

An explorer of life rather than exhausted. I admired that she lived many lives across the world, yet there was so much more joy she could have embraced,” says Gargi Haritakam, activist. In real life, women like Neeli’s countless “other versions” exist—scarred, strong, liberated, celebrating life without apology. Superheroines can be happy, wicked, funny, quirky, sexually liberated and love peace, eating fruits and sweets, wear sarees, all while acing women’s representation tests like the Bechdel test and the Sexy Lamp test. True heroism does not need to follow conventions, violence, or the “Barbie-doll” ideal.

Fin.