The Raja Saab movie review: Prabhas' horror-comedy is messy, bizarre and defies logic

The year 2026 has started, and wallah, the first entry into the worst film list is here. Prabhas’ Raja Saab is out in theatres, and the three-hour-long ruckus will give you a headache that not even medicine can cure. I watched the film in a press show, but those who will pay for this movie will cry their eyes out; first for the money they have put into this movie. Second is the time, which is even more precious.

The theatre business is already going through a rough patch, and bringing audiences back to theatres is becoming a challenging job every day. But if movies like this continue to come out, it will not only break audience trust but also harm other movies that are worth watching.

Raja Saab: What’s the story

The movie revolves around Raja (Prabhas), who is an orphan and lives with his grandmother Gangamaa, played by Zarina Wahab. She’s suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. In her life, she is only yearning for her missing husband Kanakaraju (Sanjay Dutt), and she keeps insisting that Raja bring his grandfather back.

One shiny morning, Raja sees a picture of his grandfather on his friend’s phone, and soon he is off to Hyderabad to bring him back.

Soon, Raja learns about the evil side of his grandfather, and now his focus is on the treasure of his grandmother. To find it, Raja and his clan get to an abandoned villa in the jungle, which is controlled by Kanakaraju and mysterious powers. As the story unfolds, the shocking truth about Raja’s grandparents is revealed, and now Raja has to save his grandmother.

Will he be able to save his grandmother, and will he be able to get all her grandmother's family treasures back, make the rest of the story?

The weird world of Raja Saab

Directed and co-written by Maruthi, the movie feels forced from the start. It begins with a man who is attracted by a Rs 500 note to an abandoned dark mansion in a jungle, where there are mysterious objects, from hypnosis items and weird settings to a piano with a skull-head design and a black cat roaming around. Poor cats are always the brand ambassadors of such houses, and that meow sound, I don’t know when it will come to an end. Time and again, throughout the whole movie, the cat plays the best part

Raja, who has the motive to find his grandfather, is a story that runs parallel to the story of him with the girls, Anitha (Riddhi Kumar), Bessy (Nidhhi Agerwal), and Bhairavi (Malavika Mohanan), who are mad for him. Two girls love him, and he loves one girl and is not able to ignore the other two. In short, he wants all three.

From the starting frame to the end, the weird things in the movie continue to test your temper, with no scope for making a laugh. Now comes the most irritating part: whenever Raja sees Bessy, she transforms into a white angel with feathers, and Raja starts doing some weird dance steps. In most of the first half, Raja is randomly wooing girls, with fights that feel inspired by some old South Indian movie. Anything can happen at any time.

Still from Raja Saab Photograph: (X)

In the second half of the movie, when they are all stuck in the mansion, and the grandmother has her own trauma, what is her grandson doing? Dancing with the three girls. And even in the abandoned mansion, how they can get the best sarees is beyond logic.

With a sloppy plot, the writers get tangled in their own narrative. They try to make the film horror, horror-comedy, and rom-com all at once. But the problem lies in how all these ideas are jumbled together without clarity, and the result is a confused mess that is hard to follow at many points. At one time it's horror, the next what we see is the actor's dancing at some foreign locations.

Still from Raja Saab Photograph: (X)

The VFX looks fake, but it crosses the bar of artificiality. At times, it feels like watching a television show, more specifically, Naagin. With fabricated elements everywhere, nothing feels real or immersive or natural, even the acting. Another major issue is that the old mansion setup filled with weird objects, dark corridors, and predictable horror cues has become an overused trope, and the film does nothing new with it. As a result, it fails to excite or engage.

With a huge budget, the movie is undoubtedly grand, but what will the audience do with it when nothing is interesting to hook onto?

In terms of story, Raja Saab offers nothing that holds the audience’s attention. The sets look cheap, similar to a daily soap and bizarre sequences that we don't know why were even added in the movie. What is truly disappointing is Prabhas’ and Sanjay Dutt's decision to be part of a film where every frame feels juvenile and purposeless. The exaggeration is pushed to such an extent that it neither makes you laugh nor entertains you; instead, it only ends up boring you.