Udal () is a 2022 Indian Malayalam language drama thriller film written and directed by Ratheesh Raghunandan and produced by Gokulam Gopalan.
Udal was theatrically released on 20 May 2022. The regional OTT platform Saina Play announced on 23 December 2023, that it had acquired the digital rights to the movie 'Udal'. Streaming begins 5 January 2024.
Plot Shiny is looking after her bedridden mother-in-law and lives with her father-in-law, Kuttichan, and her son. Her husband is away for work. Her only relief is spending time with her college friend, Kiran. One night, while Kiran is visiting her, they become intimate. Afterward, Shiny tells Kiran that she is fed up with taking care of her mother-in-law for nearly four years and wants freedom from this burden. Shiny decides to kill her mother-in-law.Shiny and Kiran strangle her mother-in-law to death using a bath towel. However, they forget to remove the bath towel from the body. They both return to Shiny's room.
Later, Kuttichan goes to see his wife and finds her dead. He mourns her loss and then hears Shiny talking to someone in her room.Shiny and Kiran become tense and go back to confirm that the murder was successful. When they look at the body, they discover that the bath towel is missing.
Suddenly, they hear strange noises inside the house. When they go to check where the sounds are coming from, Kuttichan brutally attacks both of them. He is so strong that they are unable to defend themselves.Kuttichan seeks revenge by continuously attacking and injuring Shiny and Kiran. Desperate, Shiny asks Kiran to call one of his friends to the house so they can kill Kuttichan.When Kiran's friend arrives, Kiran learns about Shiny's other affairs. Meanwhile, Kuttichan kills Kiran's friend.
Realizing there is no other way out, Shiny calls her husband and blames Kiran for everything. Kiran overhears the conversation and, in a fit of rage, kills Shiny.Kuttichan then kills Kiran.The next day, an ambulance arrives and takes Kuttichan to the hospital. Before leaving, Kuttichan asks his son to see his mother one last time.When Shiny's husband enters the house, he finds it covered in blood.Only Kuttichan survives in that house.
Cast Indrans as Kuttichayan Durga Krishna as Shiny Dhyan Sreenivasan as Kiran Jude Anthany Joseph as Reji (Shiny's Husband) Master Kannan as Jerin (Shiny's Son) Anjana Appukkuttan as Reena Arun Punalur
Release Udal was theatrically released on 20 May 2022. On 23 December 2023, regional OTT platform Saina Play announced that they had acquired the digital rights to the film and began streaming it on 5 January 2024.
Reception A critic from The Times of India rated Udal 3 out of 5 stars and wrote "Udal is definitely worth a watch". Sajin Shrijith from Cinema Express rated Udal 3.5 out of 5 stars and wrote "The ambition of Udal, however, is more in line with James Hadley Chase than Raymond Chandler or James M Cain. It has the finesse of a small airport novel you read and then forget. But it's a decent effort, nevertheless. In the midst of its overwhelming darkness, Udal also finds some time for dark humour." Shilpa S from OTTPlay rated Udal 2 out of 5 and wrote "Although Udal boasts of the talents of stars such as Indrans and Dhyan Sreenivasan, Ratheesh Reghunandan fails to weave a compelling narrative out of the claustrophobic thriller." Sangeetha KS from Samayam rated Udal 4 out of 5 and wrote "The film fills in as a seat-edge thriller beyond the family drama. Throughout the film, the scenes are taken to another level, shattering the audience's guessing what will happen in the next moment. The film received an A certificate for its sexually explicit content, obscene language, and violent scenes. It is better to watch movies without children."
Watching Udal through the Theory of Ecstasism: My Reflections Dr. R. Arunachalam There are occasions when a literary theory unexpectedly finds confirmation not in a novel or a poem but in a visual medium. My experience with the Malayalam film Udal (2022) was one such occasion. I watched the film without any intention of examining it through the lens of the Theory of Ecstasism. In fact, I expected it to be just another psychological thriller built around crime, violence, and family conflict. As the narrative unfolded, however, I realized that the film was engaging with several issues that had occupied my mind while formulating the Theory of Ecstasism. By the time the film ended, I felt that I had witnessed not merely a thriller but a visual text that could be meaningfully interpreted through the concepts of nudity, nakedness, and ecstasy. The very title of the film attracted my attention. Udal, meaning Body, immediately reminded me that the human body occupies a central place in the Theory of Ecstasism. Throughout history, the body has been viewed from different perspectives—biological, religious, philosophical, psychological, and artistic. Yet the body itself remains innocent. It neither possesses morality nor immorality. It simply exists. What transforms the body into an object of fear, shame, desire, or conflict is not the body itself but the meanings that society imposes upon it. This distinction forms the basis of my understanding of nudity and nakedness. Nudity, as I have argued elsewhere, represents the natural condition of the human body. Nakedness, on the other hand, is a psychological and cultural construction. It emerges when the body becomes burdened with secrecy, guilt, shame, possessiveness, or exploitation. The movement from nakedness to nudity is, in Ecstasist terms, a movement towards acceptance, harmony, and ultimately ecstasy. While watching Udal, I repeatedly found myself returning to this distinction. The film does not merely narrate the story of an illicit relationship and its violent consequences. Beneath the surface lies a deeper exploration of human desire, emotional imprisonment, and the consequences of concealing one's inner conflicts. Every major character appears to be struggling with an invisible burden. Their actions are driven less by external circumstances than by unresolved psychological tensions. Shiny, the central character, lives within a house that has gradually become a prison. For nearly four years she has been caring for her bedridden mother-in-law while her husband works away from home. Her daily existence is marked by routine, responsibility, and emotional isolation. The arrival of Kiran, her college friend, appears to offer an escape from this suffocating existence. Their relationship is presented not merely as physical attraction but as an attempt to recover a sense of freedom that Shiny believes she has lost. At this stage, the film does not invite the audience to pass immediate moral judgement. Instead, it encourages us to observe the gradual transformation of human emotions. Desire itself is not portrayed as evil. Loneliness is not condemned. Emotional intimacy is not presented as inherently immoral. Rather, the tragedy begins when desire becomes inseparable from deception. It is at this point that the distinction between nudity and nakedness becomes particularly relevant. From the perspective of Ecstasism, physical intimacy by itself does not constitute nakedness. Nakedness begins when intimacy is accompanied by concealment, fear, betrayal, and manipulation. Shiny and Kiran do not merely hide their relationship; they gradually allow secrecy to dominate their emotional lives. Their love no longer seeks understanding but survival. Consequently, the relationship loses its liberating quality and becomes psychologically oppressive. One of the remarkable strengths of Udal is that it communicates these emotional transitions visually rather than verbally. Long before violence enters the narrative, the atmosphere of the film suggests that something within the household has already begun to decay. The silence of the rooms, the confined interiors, the bedridden mother-in-law, and the routine movements of the characters collectively create an environment where emotional suffocation becomes almost tangible. As I watched these scenes, I felt that the house itself was functioning as a metaphor. It was no longer merely a physical structure but an extension of the minds of its inhabitants. Every room appeared to conceal a secret. Every closed door seemed to separate one emotional reality from another. The architecture of the house reflected the architecture of the human mind—a mind divided between desire and duty, freedom and responsibility, concealment and revelation. It was at this point that I became convinced that Udal deserved to be examined through the Theory of Ecstasism. The film was no longer simply narrating events; it was visualizing the psychological journey from apparent freedom to complete inner imprisonment. What fascinated me most was that this transformation was achieved not through philosophical dialogue but through the language of cinema itself. The more I reflected on the film, the more I realized that every major cinematic element—characterization, lighting, sound, editing, camera movement, and setting—was participating in this exploration of the human condition. The body remained at the centre of the narrative, but the real conflict was taking place within the mind. It is precisely this tension between the visible body and the invisible consciousness that lies at the heart of the Theory of Ecstasism.
Part II: The Body, Desire, and the Psychology of Nakedness One of the reasons Udal continued to occupy my thoughts long after I had finished watching it was its refusal to remain a simple thriller. The murder is certainly the turning point of the narrative, but it is not the real beginning of the tragedy. The tragedy begins much earlier, when the characters gradually lose the ability to live honestly with themselves. From the perspective of Ecstasism, this is precisely the point at which nudity gives way to nakedness. While formulating the Theory of Ecstasism, I often reflected on the fact that society tends to confuse these two conditions. Nudity is natural; nakedness is psychological. The body by itself carries neither guilt nor virtue. It is our attitudes towards the body that transform it into an object of fear, shame, desire or exploitation. As I watched Udal, I repeatedly felt that the film was dramatizing this distinction without consciously attempting to do so. Shiny's relationship with Kiran illustrates this idea quite powerfully. Their intimacy is not presented merely to arouse curiosity or sensationalism. Rather, it reveals the emotional vacuum in which Shiny has been living. She is physically present in her home, yet emotionally absent from it. Her husband is away. Her daily routine revolves around caring for her bedridden mother-in-law. The house has ceased to be a home and has become a place of obligation. In such circumstances, Kiran enters not simply as a lover but as an emotional refuge. At this stage, I did not find myself condemning either character. Instead, I became interested in understanding the psychological movement that the film was portraying. Human desire, by itself, is not destructive. Every human being longs for companionship, affection and recognition. Ecstasism has never regarded desire as sinful. It becomes destructive only when it loses its balance and disconnects itself from responsibility. This, I believe, is exactly what happens in Udal. The relationship gradually ceases to be an expression of emotional intimacy and becomes a conspiracy sustained by deception. The lovers are no longer searching for happiness; they are searching for escape. Once escape becomes the primary objective, every obstacle appears as an enemy to be removed.