How 'Appuppan and The Boys' creator Anantharaman made Malayalam's latest horror sensation, 'Granny'

Malayalam audiences have been feasting on horror in recent months, but few releases have spread across social media quite like 'Granny'. The 40-minute short film, directed by YouTuber and actor Anantharaman Ajay, has emerged as an unlikely viral success, crossing two million views on YouTube within two weeks of its release. What began as an independently funded passion project has become one of the most talked-about Malayalam horror films online, not because it relies on loud jump scares or elaborate visual effects, but because it understands something far more unsettling. Sometimes, the scariest thing in a room is an old woman quietly waiting for dinner.

For many Malayalis, Anantharaman is synonymous with Appuppan and The Boys, the wildly popular YouTube channel known for its irreverent and often hilarious takes on Malayalam cinema. He has since ventured into acting with films such as 'Romancham', but with 'Granny', he steps behind the camera for the first time, revealing a filmmaker eager to explore far more than comedy.

At the centre of 'Granny' is a deceptively simple premise. An elderly woman, played by veteran actor KPAC Leela, lives alone. When a male home nurse, Rony (Sivaraj), arrives to care for her, he quickly realises something is deeply wrong inside the house. What follows is less a conventional haunted-house story and more a slow, suffocating descent into dread.

The film's greatest strength is undoubtedly KPAC Leela. Wearing nothing more than a faded nightgown for most of the film, she transforms the familiar image of a grandmother into something deeply unsettling. A lingering smile, an unreadable stare and a laugh that lingers long after it fades make her presence almost impossible to shake off. One scene in particular has stayed with audiences. She quietly emerges from the darkness holding a candle before sitting down to wait for the nurse to join her for dinner. There is no loud background score or sudden shock, only silence and mounting unease.

Ironically, Leela was never part of the original plan because there wasn't one.

"I honestly had no idea who would play Granny," Anantharaman says. "It was editor Midhun Murali, who had worked with Leelamma on 'Pookkalam', who suggested her name. The moment he said it, I felt she was perfect for the role. We reached out to her, and she was excited to be part of the film."

The film's 40-minute runtime also reflects a much bigger ambition. While most YouTube shorts end within 10 or 15 minutes, 'Granny' was never conceived as a short film.
"It began as one of the stories in a collection I'd written," Anantharaman says. "I later developed it into a screenplay. The idea was always to make it a feature, but our budget simply didn't allow it."

The original script ran to around 60 pages, but only about half of it could be filmed.
"We shot only about 30 pages," he says. "If we'd filmed the entire screenplay, the film would've easily run for over 70 minutes. We even had to remove large portions of the climax because we couldn't afford to shoot them."

Those financial limitations shaped almost every creative decision. Instead of scouting for locations, the production moved into Anantharaman's own grandmother's house, which became the eerie home at the centre of the story. The cast and crew largely consisted of his friends, and the project was funded entirely by the filmmaker himself.

"The entire team behind 'Granny' are my friends," he says. "Shooting in my grandmother's house meant we didn't have to spend time or money looking for another location. Once we decided that, everything came together very quickly."

Despite making an assured directorial debut, Anantharaman says directing was never part of the plan.

"I went to film school to study acting. I never learnt direction," he says. "I've always loved writing, and I never imagined I'd direct a film. But when the right circumstances came along, I decided to try it. Once I did, I realised I really enjoyed it."

His years on YouTube, he believes, gave him a working understanding of different aspects of filmmaking.

"A director should understand writing and have some knowledge of acting," he says. "Because I've been creating content on YouTube for so long, I had a basic understanding of how all these things come together."

That perhaps explains why he has never wanted to be confined to a single creative identity.
"I don't want to do just one thing," he says. "I enjoy trying different things and seeing where they take me."
Choosing horror for his debut was equally intentional. Instead of relying on relentless jump scares, he wanted to create a slow-burning Gothic horror story.

"I didn't want to make a cliche horror film full of jump scares," he says. "The basic format of 'Granny' is closer to 'Dracula'. If you look at Gothic horror, whether it's 'Nosferatu' or even 'Bramayugam', it all goes back to 'Dracula'. My influences also come from the books I've read and even the video games I've played."

The film's release also coincided with another Malayalam horror project, the web series 'Muthassi', which also featured KPAC Leela in the lead. While the timing invited comparisons, Anantharaman says it was purely coincidental.

"We actually shot 'Granny' in August 2025 and planned to release it in January 2026," he says. "Later, we started discussing the possibility of expanding it into a feature film, so we delayed the release. When that plan didn't work out, we finally decided to release the short."

The delay may have altered the film's release plans, but it has done little to affect its reception. At a time when audiences are embracing horror once again, 'Granny' has struck a chord with viewers through atmosphere rather than spectacle.