‘HALF’ Stars Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj on Reimagining the Indian Western at TIFF : Coastal House Media

When the classic “curry western” mutates with the feral gore of vampire lore, the result is HALF, director Samjad’s electrifying neo-Western that marks a ferocious new chapter for Malayalam cinema. Blending Sergio Leone’s lawless frontier aesthetics with the visceral martial choreography of Very Tri Yulisman (The Raid 2), the film plunges audiences into the brutal Pai Nagar desert. Here, half-vampire twins Ethan and Ivy are left for dead by a ruthless band of marauders, triggering an unyielding, blood-drenched quest for vengeance. Making history as the first Malayalam film to premiere at Toronto International Film Festival’s prestigious Midnight Madness, HALF isn’t merely an action spectacle; it’s a genre-defying cultural statement that grounds supernatural abilities in raw human emotion, sibling bonds, and an eclectic, scene-stealing soundtrack.

In this exclusive interview with Coastal House Media journalist Aayush Sharma, lead actors Ranjith Sajeev (Ethan) and Aiswarya Raj (Ivy) break down how they approached their roles as grounded human beings first and supernatural creatures second. From building an unspoken sibling dynamic to executing unpolished, primal fight choreography and navigating non-verbal performance, Sajeev and Raj offer a deep dive into the making of this groundbreaking film, and why Malayalam genre cinema is poised to captivate global audiences strictly on its own terms.

Ethan is technically a vampire, but HALF places him inside the tradition of the Indian Western hero: a solitary figure moving through a lawless landscape and eventually dispensing his own form of justice. How did you construct Ethan physically and psychologically so he felt like a character from an Indian Western first and a supernatural creature second?

Ranjith Sajeev: As you said, the genre of this film blends a lot of different genres, and that’s exactly what Samjad had in mind as well. That’s how we conceived the overall aesthetic of the characters and the film. It’s a neo-Western film featuring vampires, and I feel like that’s where the newness of the genre comes in as well. Talking about Ethan specifically, even though he’s a Daywalker, which is a half-human, half-vampire hybrid, to him, he’s just a regular guy. He has a sister he bickers and fights with; he does everyday things, and he experiences very human emotions. So, we wanted to approach these characters with a strong sense of humanity as well.

Usually, when you see vampires, they have a much larger-than-life presence in how they’re presented. I think that’s something we’ve seen throughout the years. But with Ethan and Ivy, we wanted to ground them as characters first and foremost. The fact that they’re supernatural creatures is secondary; it’s simply a part of their abilities. The bigger question for us was: how do you make them feel really relatable and grounded as siblings? How do you make their sibling camaraderie work and make the audience connect with them as characters? I feel like that’s the way we approached the film. There’s a very realistic and grounded treatment of the way we approached these characters, and that’s exactly what Samjad had in mind when he first presented the film to me.

Official Poster of ‘HALF’ (Credit: Fragrant Nature Film Creations)

Aiswarya, your character Ivy might be the most technically fascinating character in the film because she is non-verbal, yet she is also a supernatural being capable of extraordinary violence. How did you build an internal emotional vocabulary for her? Did you consciously create different physical registers for affection, fear, anger, and bloodlust, knowing that dialogue could not communicate those transitions?

Aiswarya Raj: Yes, actually, before the film, I had some sign language practice and preparation. While preparing for the film, I wanted Ivy to be like any normal person, and I didn’t want the fact that she couldn’t speak to define her in any way. She has that aspect of her life, but it’s just a part of who she is. It doesn’t necessarily explain what she does or who she is as a person.I wanted her to be a regular person who is out there doing all the things she wants to do in life, and nothing should come in the way of that. I didn’t want her to think, “Oh, I have this, so I’m vulnerable or helpless.” Nothing like that. She’s really bold and confident; she knows what she wants, and she knows how to build something for herself.

She never really thought of herself as a vampire. She knew that she and her brother had this supernatural ability within them, but that didn’t define them. They had never actually experienced an incident where they had to use those powers. They knew they had heightened sensitivity, healing abilities, and that they were more powerful than regular people, but that was it. To them, those were just traits they had, and even those abilities came with their own weaknesses. For example, not being able to see in extreme light is a weakness, right? I wanted Ivy to see herself in that way. She doesn’t consider herself extraordinary, but she knows herself very well. She’s a go-getter, and creating that character wasn’t particularly difficult for me because certain parts of her felt relatable to me. In some ways, she was also a version of myself that I would aspire to be. I really like certain aspects of her personality.

At the same time, I would say she’s a little arrogant, and I had that in mind as well. I never wanted her to be this perfect human being. She could be a little flawed, a little difficult, and a little more normal in that sense. She’s not conventional. I didn’t want her to be the conventional heroine who is helpless and needs someone else to help her. I didn’t want to put her in a box. I wanted the audience to have their own interpretation of her. I wanted them to look at her and think, “Okay, let me figure this character out myself.” In a way, I wanted to give the audience a challenge: read the character for yourself and tell me who she is. That’s something I really wanted from Ivy.

The film gives Ethan supernatural abilities, but that can actually create an acting challenge because conventional action stakes are different when your character is significantly harder to kill. Did you approach Ethan’s invulnerability as a source of confidence, or did you deliberately build some vulnerability underneath it so the audience still feels something when he is attacked?

Ranjith: I think that vulnerability isn’t just something that came from me. I think everyone involved, including Samjad and the choreographer, really understood that we had to bring that vulnerability into the characters. Because at the end of the day, you want to see a protagonist go through challenges. When they face hardships and eventually succeed, that’s when it feels earned, right? Even with the fight choreography, it’s really raw and unpolished. If you look at the choreographer’s previous work, like the Rage series, they’re amazing action films, but the characters in those films are expert martial artists. They’re technically trained and know exactly what they’re doing.

These characters, however, the vampires or Daywalkers, are just normal beings. To them, they’re normal people who happen to have vampiric abilities. They completely depend on those abilities when it comes to combat. If they didn’t have those abilities, they probably would have been dead within the first 10 minutes. I feel like those abilities add a completely different dimension to the combat because the fighting is primarily animalistic. They’re vampires, they’re creatures, and when they awaken that part of themselves, it becomes very primal and feral. They just go all in, guns blazing, because they know they’re going to heal and that their abilities will protect them. So the fighting becomes really scrappy instead of technical.

I feel like that scrappy nature of the choreography is our flavor in this film, and we’ve carried it throughout all the action sequences. Even though these characters have supernatural abilities, they still have to adapt to every situation and every fight. If you look at all the fight sequences, every single one has its own originality. The bar fight isn’t like the house fight, and the house fight isn’t like the climax fight. The circumstances are different each time, so the characters have to adapt accordingly. That adaptability plays a huge role in the choreography. That also means the audience gets a new experience with every fight scene. It doesn’t become monotonous or feel like they’re watching the same kind of action repeatedly. I feel like that vulnerability and the scrappy, raw nature of the fighting are really the flavor of the film, and ultimately, they’re the identity of the fight choreography as well. So yes, bringing that vulnerability into these characters, even within the fight sequences, was something we did very deliberately.

Ivy’s cellphone playlist becomes part of the film’s sonic identity. That creates an unusual contrast: we see an extremely violent character moving through brutal action while music associated with her personal taste plays alongside it. Did you think of the playlist almost as Ivy’s dialogue? In other words, were you using the songs to reveal aspects of her personality that she could not express verbally?

Aiswarya: Verbally, yeah, that would have been a great take, but when I was going through it, I felt like it would take away from her personality. She’s a really cool person. She’s very nonchalant, and her attitude is almost like, “I’ll just make this disappear.” If there’s an obstacle in my way, I’ll just make it disappear. That was the kind of thought process behind her. As for the playlist, I haven’t heard it yet, so I have no idea what it sounds like. They told me it’s great, though, so I’m really looking forward to hearing it. I think the playlist also adds to her personality. Almost like you said, the dialogue tells you, “This is how I am.” But like I said earlier, I wanted her to remain mysterious. I wanted people to feel like, “Let me read her. Let me get into her head and figure out what she’s thinking.” I think the playlist adds to that mystery while also bringing out her coolness.

I think that was a brilliant move by the writers because, without the playlist, she might have felt a little more distant from the rest of the movie. Drenjith has his own way of communicating, and he has more freedom when it comes to expressing himself verbally, whereas Ivy doesn’t have that same freedom. So, the playlist really speaks for her. It becomes another way for her to communicate and gives the audience a glimpse into her personality without having to explain everything through dialogue.

Ranjith: Like Baby Driver, I think music plays a really, really important role in a film. It can elevate so many scenes and sequences, and that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve here. From the get-go, this was supposed to be a high-octane action-adventure film, and to translate that experience and feeling in the right way, music plays a huge part. That’s especially thanks to Mithun Mukundan, who’s the music composer of the film. There are some really cool tracks in this movie, and I don’t want to spoil too much because I want to leave that experience for the audience. But definitely, it’s an amalgamation of everything: the music, the fight choreography, the sound design, and the character work. All of these elements come together to make this a true theatrical experience.

HALF stars Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj (Credit: Fragrant Nature Film Creations)

Ethan and Ivy are twins, but Ivy is non-verbal while Ethan becomes the more expressive half of their relationship. How did you and Aiswarya establish their communication without relying too heavily on dialogue? Were there particular physical gestures, eye movements, rhythms, or recurring behaviours that became part of Ethan and Ivy’s private language?

Ranjith: I think we just had a very natural chemistry, honestly. We pretty much just winged it. We spent around 150 days on location shooting the film, so we talked a lot and spent a lot of time together. It got to the point where we subconsciously knew how to balance each other out in scenes. The funny thing is that the intro scene of the film, where you see the siblings bickering, was actually the last scene we shot. By then, our chemistry had already meshed really well, and I feel like that was a very deliberate plan from Samjad as well. After everything else had been shot, he saved the introduction of these characters for last so that our chemistry would be at its peak. I feel like that’s how we achieved that dynamic.

There’s also a scene midway through the film that I don’t want to spoil, but it’s an intimate moment between the siblings that becomes the driving force behind what they do for the rest of the film. It’s a one-take scene, and we actually had a light issue while shooting it. We had been shooting at that location for around four days, and this was our last day there. Samjad wanted to shoot the scene in this very specific, almost dawn-like light. It couldn’t be too bright, but it also couldn’t be too dark, so we had a very small window to get the shot. While the camera was being set up, Samjad basically told us what we needed to do and then left us to our own devices. We were like, “Okay.” But by that point, we knew each other so well that even without a detailed plan, we trusted that we would be able to balance our chemistry in the best way possible.

We did the scene, and that was it. It was one take. We didn’t do another take after that. So, what I’m trying to say is that the chemistry between us was pretty much unspoken and unsaid. We didn’t have to do a lot of pre-planning before every scene, like, “Okay, you say this and I’ll react like this.” It just happened naturally. And I feel like that adds a lot to these characters and the emotions in the film because the chemistry came from a really natural space for both of us.

Aiswarya: Yeah, and as he said, we’re really not that expressive as siblings. Right from the introduction, you see them bickering, and I think it’s a very realistic portrayal of what it’s like to have a brother or sister. When you’re sitting at home, you don’t necessarily talk to each other all the time. You just coexist. They’ve been living together for around 25 years, so at that point, you know each other so well. You can just look at each other and communicate so many things without actually saying anything. A lot of it is unspoken, and I think that’s what happened with us as well. Maybe it’s because of the amount of time we spent together, but we developed this very natural sibling vibe. By the end, I would almost say we looked like twins!

I actually still remember the first time we met. We accidentally wore the same thing. We were both wearing a black shirt and jeans. I remember thinking, “Yeah, this is exactly what you guys look like: fraternal twins!” And I think that was a great sign for the casting.

There is an interesting contradiction in Ivy: she is physically terrifying but potentially emotionally more mysterious because the audience cannot simply listen to her explain herself. How much did you deliberately withhold from the performance? Did you ever have to resist the temptation to “show” the audience exactly what Ivy was feeling?

Aiswarya: Ivy was feeling… No, actually, whatever she did, I would say that it was always truthful to her character. I never felt like, “Oh, I have to show this emotion here because this is where the character is supposed to feel it.” Ivy always had this curtain in front of her, almost like a mask. She doesn’t feel the need to show her emotions all the time. I think the only time she really lets something out is the moment he mentioned earlier, that intimate moment between the siblings. All the frustration she’s been carrying is suddenly there, and she needs to take it out on somebody. But she’s not angry at her brother. She’s angry that something like this happened and that he had to go through it. Honestly, she would have preferred to keep all of that inside her own head, but it came out. It just burst out in that moment, and she never intended for it to happen that way.

For most of the film, her face is really plain, and I wanted to keep it that way. Initially, I thought very consciously about maintaining that throughout the film. But after a point, I stopped thinking about it. I never thought, “Okay, I need to do something with my face here,” or, “I need to use this particular body language in this scene.” There was nothing like that. After a while, I just lost myself in the character, and it was all Ivy. I think I was like that on set as well. I’m not even sure, honestly, but at some point, I wasn’t consciously thinking about how I was playing Ivy anymore. I was just being her.

Malayalam cinema has increasingly demonstrated that a film can be deeply rooted in its own cultural language while still travelling internationally without being “translated” into a generic global cinema. HALF takes that even further by using a very local Indian genre history as the foundation for a vampire action film with an international action team. Do you see the future of Malayalam genre cinema as becoming less about trying to make films that look “global” and more about making films so culturally specific that the world becomes curious about them? 

Ranjith: I think the thing is, if you’re setting out to make a film with the mentality that, “Okay, we need to take this global,” that’s not necessarily going to work. I feel like you should just make the story you want to tell as honestly and truthfully as possible. If the audience connects with that content, they will make it global. That’s their job, not ours. I would say that Malayalam films, specifically, have always been really far ahead when it comes to content. Our budgets are relatively small compared to other industries, but in terms of storytelling, we’ve always tried to push into new territories. Half is no different. From the very beginning, it was never about saying, “Oh, let’s make an international film.” We were simply thinking, “Let’s make a really, really cool film that we would want to watch in a theatre.” I feel like that ideology is what ultimately pushes cinema and films to a global scale. When you make something that’s relatable to an audience, and they can genuinely resonate with it, that’s when you can take a film beyond its original boundaries and connect with audiences globally. I feel like that mentality is what’s really important. I’m just hoping this can be the beginning of Malayalam cinema going global in the most organic way possible. Half is the first Malayalam film to premiere at Midnight Madness and the third Indian film to do so, and that itself is a huge honour for all of us as a team. From here on, we’re just hoping it continues to go upwards. That’s what we’re all hoping for.

Aiswarya: I’d say this is probably one of the best examples of cultural exchange. We took a very Western element, something with that classic Dracula and European vampire influence, and blended it with an Indian way of filmmaking and storytelling. Even the characters on the other side, the negative characters in our film, are very Indian. Their body language, their personalities, and the way they behave are deeply rooted in Indian culture. So, to blend those characters and that cultural identity with a story that has these Western supernatural elements is, I think, a really interesting form of cultural exchange. We’ve been taking influences from international cinema for a long time, and Malayalam cinema, in particular, has always been ahead of its time in that regard. Our stories have traditionally been very character-driven. The premise is important, of course, but the characters have always been at the heart of the story. When you watch a Lalettan or a Mammootty film, you’re not necessarily watching a person simply playing a character. You feel like you’re seeing yourself. You think, “Oh, I know this person. I’ve seen this happen in my own life.” Malayalam cinema has always had that quality. I would say Half is a newer version of that tradition. We’ve taken these influences and approached them in a very grounded and realistic way. As he said, the idea felt very new to us, and I think that’s what makes the film interesting.

Ranjith: I think it was post-COVID that we, as an Indian audience, really started embracing more naturalism in films as well. I’ve said this before, but Indian audiences don’t just watch Indian films. We watch Korean films, Spanish films, and films from all over the world. We want good films, regardless of where they come from. And I think that’s something that challenges us as actors and filmmakers to push ourselves and provide a new experience for the audience. How can we deliver something they haven’t seen before? How can we surprise them in new ways? Content plays a huge, huge part in that. As I said, it’s about organically trying to tell the story you want to tell without being afraid of whether it will let the audience down or whether it will be perceived as something that can travel internationally. If you tell the story in the truest and most honest way possible, I believe that global reach will happen organically.