Name: Euphoria
Genre: Drama, Social
Released: 2026-02-06
Rating: 7.5
Cast: Bhumika Chawla, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Sara Arjun, Nassar, Mathew Varghese

A society teeters on the brink,  as youth disillusionment and moral decay threaten to unravel the fabric of community,  raising urgent questions about responsibility,  accountability and the true cost of success.

Euphoria

Times of India

The Indian Express

In the shadows of a lively party, civil service aspirant Chaithra (Sara) chats amiably with Vikas (Vignesh), joined by her friend Deepthi. But the friendly facade crumbles into a nightmare as Vikas and his friends sexually assault her. Chaithra fights back by filing charges—yet justice hangs in precarious balance. The first half masterfully constructs this harrowing trope with unflinching conviction. The second half delves into the aftermath of the trial and Vikas's life, daring to ask, Does a rapist deserve to thrive? The storytelling slows momentarily in the latter half, yet the powerful climax restores the film’s emotional weight.
Sara Arjun delivers a compelling performance in her Telugu debut, anchoring the film with remarkable emotional depth and conviction as a sexual assault survivor. She carries the pain, resilience, and quiet strength of her character with maturity beyond her years.
Bhumika Chawla brings raw intensity to her role, portraying the guilt and emotional conflict of a working mother whose son becomes the prime suspect in the crime. She navigates the delicate balance between moral righteousness and maternal instinct with restraint, exposing the inner turmoil of a woman torn between truth and love.
Vignesh Reddy makes a striking debut as Vikas, fully owning the darkness of his character. His transformation—from a quirky schoolboy to a troubled drug addict—is handled with finesse. Post his jail term, Vikas’s struggle to reintegrate into society and question whether redemption is possible lends the film much of its emotional weight.
Gautham Vasudev Menon, as cop Jayadev Nair, sharpens the narrative with a controlled and effective performance, adding gravitas and tension to the proceedings.
At its core, Gunasekhar’s film reflects the growing rift within modern families, particularly between parents and teenagers. It sensitively explores themes of addiction, sexual assault, consent, modern parenting, and contemporary teenage struggles. Inspired by real-life incidents, the director handles the first half with confidence. While the second half suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally turns preachy, the film regains its footing in a powerful climax.
The final moments—where Vikas seeks Chaithra’s signature for a legal process after she has become an IAS officer—are deeply moving. Vikas breaks down upon seeing her, while Chaithra remains composed, choosing strength and forgiveness over bitterness. This moment elevates the film, underscoring the importance of empathy, forgiveness, and second chances.
Kaala Bhairava’s background score perfectly complements the film’s shifting moods and emotional beats. Ultimately, the film stands out for redefining strength—presenting its female lead as bold, self-aware, and resilient, rather than reducing her to a victim.

After the high-profile misfire of Shaakuntalam, director Gunasekhar makes a sharp pivot with Euphoria, a grounded, youth-centric social drama that moves away from the big-scale, VFX-heavy spectacles he was previously known for. The result is a film that is undeniably sincere in its ambitions.

At the heart of the film is a bright young woman, played by Sara Arjun, with dreams of cracking the civil services exam. Her world collapses after she falls into the trap of substance abuse following a fateful party. Alongside her story runs another painful thread. Bhumika Chawla portrays a mother watching helplessly as her own son destroys himself through drugs. Together, these two arcs paint a disturbing picture of how addiction, crime, and moral decay are tearing families apart in modern urban India. The film doesn’t shy away from touching on sensitive subjects like violence against women, child protection laws, and the growing drug menace in the city.

This is a film with an iron spine. It picks a stance on every issue it raises and never deviates from it, not for commercial convenience, not for audience comfort. The writing is sharp and loaded with hard-hitting dialogues that land like punches, particularly in the courtroom and confrontation sequences.

The opening hour is where Gunasekhar is at his sharpest. The pacing is tight, the tension builds effectively, and viewers are drawn into the world without much setup. What truly sets Euphoria apart from other message-driven films is how it handles the idea of second chances. We’ve all heard the saying that everybody deserves a second chance, this film grabs that platitude by the collar and forces you to confront what it actually looks like in practice. When the person seeking redemption is someone who has committed the unforgivable. When the victim has to exist in the same world as her abusers being given another shot at life. Gunasekhar doesn’t offer easy answers. He shows us the messy, gut-wrenching reality of what redemption costs, and who pays the price. Watching how each character navigates their second chance forms the gripping backbone of the latter half, and it adds layers to the film that genuinely shake you. You’ll find yourself questioning your own beliefs about justice, forgiveness, and whether some lines, once crossed, can ever truly be redrawn.
A significant portion of the film’s dialogue is built around parental responsibility, and refreshingly, Gunasekhar doesn’t take the lazy route of placing all the blame on the mother, a tired trope that Indian cinema has leaned on for decades. Here, fathers are held equally accountable. Absent fathers, emotionally unavailable fathers, fathers who throw money at their children instead of time, the film points fingers in every direction that deserves it. It’s a welcome and long-overdue shift that adds real substance to the conversation the film is trying to start.

The performances across the board are exceptional. Newcomer Vignesh Gavireddy holds his own impressively for a debut, carrying the emotional weight of his character with surprising maturity. Through his character, we witness the complete unraveling of a young life enslaved by drugs. We see the highs that seduce him in, the crushing lows that follow, and the slow descent of a boy into a convict. Gunasekhar doesn’t just show us this journey; he makes us feel every flicker of emotion along the way. The desperation, the shame, the brief moments of clarity drowned out by the next fix. For a debut performance, Gavireddy carries this devastating arc with a maturity that’s nothing short of remarkable. You don’t just watch his fate unfold, you live it with him.
Most of the film is presented with an almost documentary-like realism, no unnecessary melodrama, no Tollywood-style fluff. Gunasekhar lets uncomfortable truths breathe on screen without diluting them for palatability. This is both the film’s greatest strength and the reason some viewers might find the runtime demanding. At two and a half hours, it does feel long in stretches. But every scene that might test your patience is in service of something essential, whether it’s exploring parental responsibility in a world that moves too fast for families to keep up, or showing how thin the line between innocence and destruction has become for today’s generation. There are also moments where the social messaging becomes a bit preachy, which is a trap many message-driven Telugu films fall into. Make no mistake, this film will make you deeply uncomfortable. And that’s entirely the point.
Gunasekhar proves that he still has the ability to craft powerful cinema when he strips everything down to raw storytelling, strong performances, and a message that matters. Flawed in pacing, perhaps, but fearless in its conviction.

Bhumika Chawla is an actor who appears in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi cinema. She made her acting debut with the Telugu film Yuvakudu in 2000. However, her big Bollywood debut was opposite Salman Khan in Tere Naam. Bhumika is best known for movies like Okkadu, Tere Naam, Khushi, Missamma, Gandhi My Father, Buddy and Anasuya.

Bhumika Chawla

Gautham Vasudev Menon is an Indian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor who predominantly works in Tamil film industry. He has also directed Telugu and Hindi films that either simultaneously shot with or remakes of his own Tamil films.

Gautham Vasudev Menon

Sara Arjun is an Indian child actress who mainly appears in Tamil and Hindi films and commercials. Sara had appeared in a series of commercials and a short Hindi film before the age of six. In 2010, she was signed on to portray a lead role in A. L

Sara Arjun

Nassar is a popular actor, producer, writer, director, lyricist and singer. He appears in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi cinema. Nassar made his acting debut with Kalyana Agathigal in 1985. He rose to fame with his performance as a police officer in the movie Nayakan. He appeared in movies like Roja, Thevar Magan, Bombay and Kuruthipunai. In 1995, the actor turned director with the movie Avatharam.

Euphoria(2026)