‘The Village’: How Arya and Milind Rau adapted a graphic novel into a Tamil horror series

Say you are scrolling through a streaming platform searching for the perfect horror series to binge-watch. Tamil cinema’s equations with both the horror genre and OTT have been such that many of the results may not compel you enough to invest your time in them. So naturally, there’s a lot of anticipation around Prime Video’s The Village, a series adaptation of a horror graphic novel, set to premiere on November 24.

What should also compel a viewer is that it’s a series created by Milind Rau, a filmmaker who gave one of the finest horror films in Tamil in 2017, Aval. It also has Arya (who says he isn’t a big fan of horror!) giving both the streaming space as well as pure-genre horror a shot for the first time.

In this conversation, Milind and Arya, along with actors George Maryan, Arjun Chidambaram and Muthu Kumar, speak all things The Village.

Excerpts from a conversation:

Milind, what about the story of this graphic novel inspired you?

Milind: There’s a lot that I liked, but what really inspired me was the real, human story that is at the centre of it all. The Village, set in southern Tamil Nadu, is about a man who loses his family in a ghost town that is believed to be dangerous and haunted. The story takes place over one night and shows the efforts of this man, along with those who help him, in rescuing his family.

After reading the novel, I wanted to expand this world further; I thought of exploring why the town was deserted and what emotional connection these villagers (played by Muthu Kumar, George Maryan and Aadukalam Naren) might have that pushes them to help the protagonist (played by Arya) save his family. The fact that we were talking about India’s first live-action adaptation of an Indian graphic novel, and that it is in Tamil, made it all the more so attractive.

Arya, you haven’t done a pure-genre horror project before, and ‘The Village’ is also your debut web series. What convinced you to take up this project?

Arya: I was really impressed with what Milind wanted to do with this material. In fact, he explained the scale on which it was to be mounted, the style he wanted to shoot in, and how the characters and the series would look. I realised that this would be a fresh attempt in Tamil and that if Milind achieves even 70% of what he aimed for, it would become something huge for the series space in Indian cinema.

On OTT, though audiences have taken a liking to gory visuals, we haven’t been able to show gore so boldly in films yet. So, I believe it will open the doors for other filmmakers to try something like this.

A still from ‘The Village’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Milind, you made a serious horror film ‘Aval’ in 2017, when we were getting tired of horror comedies. Since then, filmmaking technology has advanced a lot, but where do you place the horror genre in 2023?

Milind: Audiences these days are watching all types of content, especially thanks to the subtitle feature, and so our benchmarks are no longer the titles that are being made locally. We are competing with international titles like, say, The Haunting of Hill House. However, aping the Western creators would be a futile exercise. You have to root a story in a local milieu, and then bring in the horror aspect. Such content will reach a global audience because that will be refreshing to everyone. That’s how we should take this genre forward.

Moreover, in The Village, there are different kinds of horror elements. Unlike Aval, which was more about a supernatural, psychological horror, this has in-your-face action horror that will give you an edge-of-seat experience.

Usually, actors need to rely only on the script and character sketch provided by the director to understand the characters and perform. But in the case of a graphic novel adaptation, there are a lot of textual as well as visual references for your roles. Does that restrict you as an actor or excite you?

Arjun Chidambaram: I usually stick to only the material that the director gives me because if I read the source material, I enter the set with a lot of baggage. I prefer to be an empty canvas and build it up from whatever information the director has provided me. That graphic novel is a version that authors Asvin Srivatsangam, Vivek Rangachari and Shamik Dasgupta created, but this series is built from the version that screenwriters Milind, Deepthi Govindarajan and Deeraj Vaidy have written.

Muthu Kumar: What I imagine while reading the script is what I go by, and, of course, the director gives me inputs on how to improvise. In fact, I learnt the Tuticorin dialect for The Village and I was talking in that dialect even off the camera!

George Maryan, Muthu Kumar and Arjun Chidambaram
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Some believe that due to the distractions, OTT demands more from actors to engage the audiences, while others believe that actors cannot escape from even a minor slip when it comes to theatres. What is your take on this?

George Maryan: As artists, we are only acting to a particular camera. Giving our best to the character and the script is all we should care about; not how or where they will release it.

Arjun Chidambaram: The only difference I feel is that in a long format, you are not bound by time; so you can explore the character and give it some space to breathe. But our approach remains the same for both theatre and OTT.

In the West, makers are creating new IPs (Intellectual Property) while production houses are also seeing value in older IPs; the horror series ‘Goosebumps’ being a recent example. Indian cinema is still lagging when it comes to this, right?

Milind Rau: I hope The Village is a step forward in that direction. That’s how we can build on legacy stories that will have a pre-built audience. That’s what IPs are meant to do. If you manage to create a character with so much potential, the audiences will like to see that character over multiple seasons. I am confident The Village will be a start in creating a different kind of IP, one that taps into graphic novels and comic books. The West has been doing that on a huge scale. In India, there’s a big community that is waiting for such content and this might create a new avenue for IP creation.

Arya, it’s been 18 years since your debut. Looking back, you have constantly tried to reshape yourself as an actor. Where do you think the actor in you is heading right now, especially considering you are experimenting with the genre of your films?

Arya: Actors really cannot pre-plan their careers. You have to be lucky, and when you get the right project at the right time, you have to give it your all. Opportunities come to you and you have to grab it. I don’t know if it’s luck or blessings; I just hope I get more good roles to play.

The Village premieres on November 24, Friday, on Prime Video