Dies Irae, a Malayalam horror movie starring Pranav Mohanlal, was released on October 31, 2025, just in time for Halloween. Typically, we begin discussing a story with the protagonist, following their life. The film Dies Irae is no different. However, instead of relying on an element of surprise, we will explore this story in chronological order.
To get that, we need to start with the antagonist, Manu, also known as Philip Sebastian. He has two names, one is his official name, and the other is the one used colloquially. Shine Tom Chacko plays this role, though his screen time is limited.
Dies Irae: Understanding Manu Aka Philip Sebastian’s Connection To Kani
The character of Manu is deeply immersed in theology, is a bookworm, and is otherwise harmless, as far as we know. However, he suffers from a respiratory issue that eventually leads to his death. However, years before death, his mother, Elsamma, played by Jaya Kurup, who works as a house help for the family of the female lead, Kani, played by Sushmita Bhat, steals the latter’s belongings.
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These stolen possessions are given to Philip by his mother, including an anklet worn by dancers called Chilanka. Philip wears Kani’s Chilanka when he dies due to his respiratory disease, and that becomes the anchor keeping his spirit on Earth. He continues to watch over Kani from his home through a window while his body decomposes in his room. His mother keeps his death a secret so that he would not be buried and separated from the Chilanka that binds him to the world of the living.
Time goes by, and one day, Kani is found dead. People believe she may have taken her own life, though it remains uncertain whether Philip had any role in what happened.
Dies Irae: How Rohan Shankar Gets Tied To Philip & Kani’s Eerie Plotline
Now comes the protagonist Rohan Shankar, played by Pranav Mohanlal. He is shown as a playboy, a rich brat of sorts. Rohan is an architect, just like his father, and together they run a successful construction business. His family, including his father, mother, and sister, is in the United States because his sister is about to give birth. Rohan is also supposed to join them soon.
When he finds out that Kani, a girl he had a short relationship with and later ghosted, has been found dead by suicide, he gets concerned. He fears that she might have written a letter implicating him in her death. However, that is not the case. She has not revealed anything to anyone, not even to her family. Her body is found by her brother inside a well. Rohan and a friend visit her home to offer condolences. There, Rohan meets her brother, shares a smoke with him, and secretly steals a hair clip from the house.
At Kani’s home, Rohan meets another important character named Madhusudhanan Potti, played by Gibin Gopinath. He works as a contractor in the construction field and is acquainted with Rohan’s father. Madhusudhanan’s father was known for performing rituals to drive away evil spirits, but Madhusudhanan himself stays away from such practices.
After leaving Kani’s house, strange things begin to happen to Rohan. He is physically attacked by a supernatural being, which he initially believes to be Kani, but later discovers it is actually Philip. The latter was also responsible for attacking Kani’s brother when he visited Rohan’s home, pushing him off the roof and seriously injuring him.
Rohan and Madhusudhanan start an investigation and learn that Kani had an admirer named Philip. They split up to look for more information, believing Philip had gone abroad. Since they already knew a person named Manu was also abroad, they assumed the same agent helped both. Madhusudhanan visits the church to find out more about Philip, while Rohan goes to meet Elsamma to contact Manu or find the agent who supposedly sent him abroad.
At Elsamma’s house, Rohan learns that Manu’s actual name is Philip. While she is in another room, he comes across a dried, skeletal body that turns out to be Philip’s, still wearing Kani’s Chilanka. At that moment, Elsamma suddenly strikes Rohan from behind and leaves him unconscious.
Meanwhile, at the church, Madhusudhanan learns that Manu and Philip are the same person. By nightfall, he reaches Elsamma’s house, where she is digging what appears to be a grave for Rohan, while Rohan remains unconscious inside. Madhusudhanan wakes Rohan and tells him they need to remove the Chilanka from Philip’s body to release his spirit. However, due to decomposition, the Chilanka has fused with the body, making it difficult to remove. Hearing the commotion, Elsamma storms in with an axe to kill Rohan. After a struggle, Rohan manages to knock her out.
By then, Philip’s spirit appears and attacks Madhusudhanan, trapping him in the room with the corpse. Rohan breaks open the door, cuts off the legs that still wear the Chilankas, and sets them on fire, finally releasing the spirit. The house soon goes up in flames, but Rohan manages to save Elsamma from the burning building.
Dies Irae: The Unanswered Questions & Eerie Ending
Everything appears to have ended, and Rohan gets ready to leave for the United States. But in his room, he notices Kani’s hair clip, the very one he once took and later returned to her house, now lying on his bed again. The dent in the mattress hints that someone is sitting there. When he places a bedsheet over the spot, a figure appears, Kani’s ghost, sitting there, uttering his name, having brought the clip back to him.
The hair clip was the reason Philip’s spirit haunted Rohan. Philip believed that everything belonging to Kani was also his. When the attacks began, Rohan went to Kani’s house and placed the clip back where he had taken it from. However, it wasn’t just Philip.
The first time Rohan experienced something supernatural, it happened on his bed in a similar way. So, was that Kani’s presence at the time? If that’s true, then both Kani and Philip were part of the haunting. But the real question remains: who actually attacked her brother, and why? Was her brother somehow responsible for her death? We never get those answers.
