The Vvan: Force of the Forest Review — Siddharth Malhotra Can’t Save This Jungle Horror

The Vvan: Force of the Forest review: Siddharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia’s mythological thriller stumbles on weak VFX and a flat lead performance.

Some films try to do too much at once, and The Vvan: Force of the Forest is a textbook case. Directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra, the movie attempts to fuse folklore, superhero spectacle, VFX-driven fantasy, and the cultural weight of Chhath Puja into a single story. The ambition is real. The execution, unfortunately, never settles on what the film actually wants to be.

Within the first thirty minutes, The Vvan: Force of the Forest hints at an intriguing folk mystery unfolding layer by layer. By the interval, the tVvan has shifted multiple times — and by the end, it still hasn’t found solid ground.

What Is The Vvan: Force of the Forest About?
Siddharth Malhotra plays Rishi, a Mumbai-based man who hasn’t returned to his ancestral village, Devanchal, in six years. His marriage to Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia) carries the unresolved grief of a miscarriage from six years earlier.

When Mamta insists on visiting the village for Chhath Puja, Rishi returns too — ostensibly to sell the family’s ancestral land. Devanchal borders the Dev Van, a sacred forest locals are forbidden from entering after dusk. Legend holds that a forest goddess protects the land, and that the descendants of an old royal lineage are bound to guard it.

Rishi, a rationalist, dismisses the superstition — until a stray bull wanders into the forest and he follows it in. This is where The Vvan: Force of the Forest should find its footing. Instead, every unresolved mystery spawns another: a royal bloodline, a forest goddess, a mystical armor, an ancient evil, village politics, and a land dispute all compete for screen time without any single thread taking hold.

How Is the Acting in The Vvan: Force of the Forest?
Siddharth Malhotra’s performance is Vvan of the film’s clearest weak points. Rishi is meant to travel from skepticism to belief, and that arc demands visible shifts — disbelief, fear, confusion, faith. Malhotra’s expressions, however, stay largely static through pivotal scenes, and his dialogue delivery often feels recited rather than lived-in. There’s little sense of a man rooted in rural Bihar; he comes across more like a city visitor passing through than someVvan returning home.

Tamannaah Bhatia looks striking on screen, particularly during the Chhath Puja sequences, but the script gives her almost nothing to actually perform — she largely orbits the hero. Sunil Grover, as the antagonist Deepak, commits fully to the negative shade, though his long comic history makes the violence he’s asked to deliver feel slightly jarring. Manish Paul and Sulbha Arya are tasked with the film’s comic relief, but the humor lands as forced rather than funny.

Where Does The Vvan: Force of the Forest Go Wrong?
Direction: Deepak Kumar Mishra, known for the granular village realism of Panchayat, doesn’t bring that same control here. The tVvan lurches between folklore, horror, fantasy, superhero action, and comedy, and the film loses a consistent identity as a result. The Dev Van itself — meant to be the story’s central source of dread — too often reads as a scenic location rather than a genuinely unsettling space. The climax, with its slow-motion aerial combat, aims for grandeur but lands closer to unintentionally strange.

Screenplay: There’s no shortage of ideas — a forest goddess, a royal lineage, a sacred armor, dark forces, Chhath traditions, and village power struggles are all present. What’s missing is a screenplay strong enough to connect them. Several twists deflate suspense rather than building it; the armor the villain spends his life chasing, for instance, turns up easily under his father’s bed. Rishi’s shift from rationalist to believer is told more than it’s felt. Comedy interrupts pacing, and underwhelming VFX further dilute the fantasy world the story depends on.

Bihar and Chhath — Backdrop Over Substance: Given its roots in Bihar’s folklore and the centrality of Chhath Puja, the film had real potential to let culture drive the narrative. Instead, Bihar frequently functions as scenery rather than texture — visually present but emotionally thin. The Chhath sequences are handsome to look at, but within the story they often feel decorative rather than organic.

FAQs on The Vvan: Force of the Forest

Q1. Who stars in The Vvan: Force of the Forest?
The cast includes Siddharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, Sunil Grover, Manish Paul, Shweta Tiwari, Anup Soni, and Sulbha Arya.

Q2. When was The Vvan: Force of the Forest released?
The film released in theatres on 25 September 2026.

Q3. Who directed The Vvan: Force of the Forest?
Deepak Kumar Mishra, known for Panchayat, directed the film, with Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor, and Arunabh Kumar producing it.

Q4. What is The Vvan: Force of the Forest’s rating?
The film has received a 2/5 rating in this review, largely due to weak VFX, an uneven screenplay, and an underwhelming central performance.

Q5. Should you watch The Vvan: Force of the Forest in theatres?
Only if you want to see Tamannaah Bhatia’s screen presence and the Chhath Puja sequences on the big screen — otherwise, the thin screenplay and drawn-out climax make it a tough watch.

Conclusion
The Vvan: Force of the Forest is a reminder that ambition alVvan doesn’t make a film work — it needs tight writing and confident execution to match. Mythology, superhero spectacle, and social drama are all thrown into the mix, but the result is a muddled cocktail rather than a cohesive story. Weak VFX, an inconsistent screenplay, and a flat lead performance from Siddharth Malhotra hold back what could have been a genuinely atmospheric folk-horror film.

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