Original bilingual journalism · English & తెలుగు
Cult, in theatres from 30 October 2026, is Vishwak Sen’s attempt to give Telugu cinema a full-blown slasher. He directs the film and plays the lead. Sandeep Kakarala is the producer, with Tarak Cinemas and Vanmaye Creations behind it, and it carries an adults-only A certificate. The idea is bold for a mainstream Telugu film. The execution is not. Our verdict: a film with a few strong stretches, buried under violence that shocks without ever building fear.
Story and screenplay
It is Elvin’s birthday. His father is Goa’s Home Minister, and roughly 300 guests have come to celebrate. The night turns into a trap. A masked figure on a screen sets deadly games, losing means death, and the exits are rigged with explosives. One of the people caught inside is a police officer, DSP Sankalp Nayak, played by Vishwak Sen. The survival-game format is familiar, and the film needed sharp, inventive games to make it its own. It does not have them. The first half spends too long getting everyone to the party, and the hero enters only near the interval. The final half hour, which reveals who is behind the killings and why, adds some emotional weight. By then it is late, and the ending runs on longer than it should.
Direction
Behind the camera, Vishwak Sen is most sure-footed in the fights. The long brawls are staged with real energy, and he makes good use of keeping almost everything inside one venue. Elsewhere the film confuses gore with suspense. Deaths come one after another, many of them graphic, but we never know the victims well enough to fear for them. The heavy use of abusive language grows tiresome. The tension a slasher lives on never takes hold.
Performances
Vishwak Sen plays Sankalp with his trademark attitude and is believable when the fists fly, though the role asks little else of him. As Elvin, Tarak Ponnappa is stuck with a stock spoilt-heir part. Murali Sharma, Gayatri Bharadwaj and Srikanth Iyengar are in the cast, but the large ensemble is mostly faces in a crowd, and none of the characters is written well enough to care about.
Music
If anything holds Cult together, it is Ravi Basrur’s background score. It drives the pace and lends several flat scenes an edge they do not earn on their own.
Technical craft
Aravind Viswanathan’s camerawork stays close to the fights without losing the geography, and the party set looks the part. The editing by Ravi Teja Girijala needed to be harder on the first half and the drawn-out ending.
Verdict
Cult deserves credit for trying something Telugu cinema rarely attempts. Ambition alone does not make a thriller work, and this one has more blood than bite. If you are a die-hard fan of slasher films or of Vishwak Sen’s action, you may find enough in its last stretch. Everyone else can skip it, and it is strictly not for children or anyone uneasy with graphic violence.
