If you’ve ever thought, “Family trips are stressful, but at least we’re not cursed by a demon,” Vash is here to raise the bar. Krishnadev Yagnik’s Gujarati-language supernatural psychological horror takes the simple premise of a family holiday and lovingly grinds it into dust under the heel of black magic, parental guilt, and one of the more brutal exorcism plans ever committed to film. It’s tense, emotionally sharp, and just twisted enough to make you laugh in that “I definitely shouldn’t be laughing” way.
Welcome to the Village, Please Enjoy Your Curse
Atharva, an apparently wholesome, family-oriented pilot, just wants a quiet getaway with his wife Beena and their kids Aarya and Ansh. It’s the kind of setup you’d see in a travel ad if the travel ad cut to black right before the blood sacrifice. Into their holiday wanders Pratap, a stranger who is way too “helpful,” knows way too much, and has the energy of that one neighbor who’s always available, because something is very wrong.
Atharva senses something off, but like many cinematic dads before him, he overrides his instincts in the name of politeness. The result: his entire life becomes a cautionary tale about never accepting unsolicited help from a man who looks like he might own spare altars.
Aarya, the Unwilling Battleground
The heart of Vash is Aarya, the daughter who becomes the vessel, the hostage, and eventually the collateral damage of Pratap’s obsession with power. Her possession isn’t just spinning heads and snarling; it’s a progressive, deeply unsettling loss of control. She shifts from sweet kid to violent puppet, forced into horrific actions that horrify even her.
This is where the film really digs into psychological horror. Aarya is both victim and threat, and the script never lets you forget that she’s a child trapped inside a nightmare she didn’t choose. It’s easy to see why Janki Bodiwala walked away from this with an award: she has to be innocent, terrifying, and hollowed-out by turns, and she nails each phase like she’s ticking boxes on a demon’s performance review sheet.
Pratap: HR Manager of Hell
Pratap is one of those villains who never raises his voice because he doesn’t have to. His power is in control: of minds, of bodies, of every inch of the emotional space this family occupies. He starts as that creepy-but-possibly-benign stranger, then reveals himself as a full-blown demon determined to use Aarya as his personal world-domination USB drive.
What makes him effective isn’t just his supernatural arsenal; it’s his smug certainty. He doesn’t just torment the family, he enjoys the slow-motion collapse of their hope. His eventual fate—tongue ripped out, locked away, begging for death—feels less like punishment and more like cosmic irony. For a being obsessed with control, ending up as a powerless prisoner is almost poetic. Almost.
Atharva: When “Protective Dad” Becomes “Ethical Catastrophe”
Atharva’s arc is the film’s emotional anchor, and also where the dark humor hits hardest. There’s something brutally absurd about a man realizing that the only way to save his daughter is to stab scissors into her ears. It’s horrifying, yes, but also a bleak punchline to the idea of parental sacrifice. You thought late-night feedings were bad? Try medically self-inflicted deafness as an anti-demon measure.
The film never lets him off the hook, either. He chooses Aarya’s bodily mutilation as the “solution,” then tears Pratap’s tongue out with pliers like a man auditioning for an extremely illegal dental commercial. You understand why he does it, but the cost is so grotesque that “hero” feels too clean a word. He’s not a savior; he’s a survivor who’s willing to drag his daughter through hell right alongside him.
A Family Shattered, Not Saved
A lot of possession films end with a tearful reunion and some hand-wavy promise of therapy. Vash looks at that trope, laughs, and lights it on fire. The price of breaking the curse is catastrophic: Beena and Ansh dead in a car wreck, Aarya alive but deaf and mentally enslaved, Atharva reduced to a grim, grungy shell.
That final sequence, with Atharva visiting the same house where it all went wrong, is pure, cold-blooded menace. Pratap is still alive, mutilated and chained, begging for death like a disgraced demon who finally read the terms and conditions. Atharva taunts him, savoring his helplessness. Then he walks out and feeds Aarya, who sits outside, blank and broken, still under the mental shadow of the man whimpering inside.
It’s one of the bleakest “happy endings” imaginable: the monster is caged, but so is the family, just in different ways.
Horror with a Sharp Gujarati Edge
What makes Vash stand out in a very crowded horror landscape is how comfortably it sits in its cultural and linguistic context without ever feeling small. The supernatural elements are grounded in Indian ideas of black magic, hypnotism, and demonic interference, but the emotional beats are universal: the terror of losing your child, the rage of being powerless, the corrosive effects of fear on love.
The rural vacation setting adds to the unease. This isn’t a gothic mansion or a generic haunted house; it’s somewhere that should be peaceful. The empty spaces, the distance from help, the false calm of village life—all of it amplifies the isolation of Atharva’s fight. When things go wrong out here, there is no priest on speed dial, no paranormal task force—just one father, one demon, and a set of choices that would make a therapist retire.
Violence That Actually Means Something
The gore in Vash isn’t decorative. It’s pointed. Aarya pushing her brother off the terrace, Beena and Ansh dying on the road, the self-inflicted deafness, the pliers-versus-tongue showdown—each act of violence changes the moral temperature of the story. It’s not “look how cool this is,” it’s “look how far we’ve fallen.”
That commitment to meaningful brutality is part of why the film hits as hard as it does. You can’t shrug off what happens to these people. Every injury leaves a scar that still throbs in the final frame. No one here walks away clean, and the movie doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Final Descent: A Blessing and a Curse
As a supernatural psychological horror, Vash delivers the goods: atmosphere, creeping dread, a villain who gets under your skin, and set pieces that are as emotionally nasty as they are visually striking. But it also has some real dramatic teeth, thanks to strong performances and a script that understands that the scariest thing in a possession story isn’t the demon—it’s what the living are willing to do in response.
The dark joke at the core of Vash is this: Atharva “wins.” The demon’s power is broken, the tongue is gone, the threat contained. And yet, looking at his deaf, mentally dominated daughter and the wreckage of his life, you have to ask: if this is victory, what would defeat have looked like?
It’s that question that lingers after the credits, along with one more uncomfortably funny thought: next time someone offers to “help” on your family vacation… say no.
