The Wellness Industry Gets What It Deserves

MOVIE REVIEW
Namaslay
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Genre: Comedy, Horror, Satire, Thriller
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 52m
Directors: Rish Arhant-Sudhir, Kanish Arhant-Sudhir
Writers: Rish Arhant-Sudhir, Kanish Arhant-Sudhir
Cast: Kirunthuja Srikanth-Talim, Angela Sant’Albano, Alicia Mitchell-Mangual, Usha Krishnan, Christina Moore
Where to Watch: opening August 6, 2026 in Los Angeles and New York, expanding nationwide beginning August 13

RAVING REVIEW: “Namaslay” is the kind of word that belongs on a water bottle sold beside a $140 pair of leggings. It turns a spiritual greeting into a lifestyle slogan, removing all history and meaning until nothing remains except something cute enough to print in gold lettering. Co-writers/directors Rish Arhant-Sudhir and Kanish Arhant-Sudhir take that harmless-looking piece of branding, focus it, and spend nearly two hours cutting through the business built around it. A movie like this could have easily become “too much”; instead, the humor, horror, and satire balance each other in a wonderful mix that just works!

With that said, NAMASLAY has blood, fire, mythological imagery, physical comedy, corporate jargon, family grief, and a yoga studio so aggressively curated that every candle seems to have signed a nondisclosure agreement.

Gayatri arrives in Los Angeles carrying an unresolved relationship with the Yoga her grandmother, Paati, taught her. Those memories contain warmth, discipline, and a sense of deeper connection, but they’re also tied to a loss that Gayatri hasn’t really processed. Her friend Judy invites her to an upscale studio where branding has replaced tradition with a marketable version of inner peace.

The studio sells belonging as an exclusive product. Its clients speak the language of openness while operating within a rigid social order, and every act of inclusion appears designed for a brochure. Owner Reyna quickly recognizes that Gayatri can offer the business something its current instructors can’t, even if they tried. Her interest is presented as an opportunity, but the compliments contain a transactional hunger that Gayatri doesn’t immediately recognize.

That hunger gives the satire a lot of its edge. Reyna and her employees don’t reject the culture surrounding Yoga. They want selected pieces of it, particularly anything that can be displayed, sold, or used to make the studio appear authentic. Gayatri is welcomed as long as her identity remains useful to the brand. Her knowledge matters only when it can be repackaged for customers.

Christina Moore is funny as Reyna because she doesn’t play the character as a straight-up monster. Reyna mastered the soothing tone of someone who can describe exploitation as empowerment without ever raising her voice. Her friendliness has the precision of marketing, and Moore maintains that warmth even as the character’s intentions become increasingly difficult to ignore. Reyna isn’t just insensitive. She represents an industry capable of absorbing criticism, renaming it, and selling it back to the people making the complaint. Diversity becomes decoration. Spirituality becomes an experience.

Kirunthuja Srikanth-Talim gives the film a strong emotional anchor amid its increasingly wild changes in tone. Gayatri can recognize the absurdity around her without immediately knowing how to confront it. She’s grieving, financially uncertain, eager for connection, and tempted by an opportunity that appears capable of resolving several problems at once. Srikanth-Talim doesn’t reduce that conflict to naïveté. Gayatri sees warning signs, but she also understands the appeal of being wanted in a city that can make newcomers feel invisible. Her decision to remain at the studio grows from loneliness and complicated ambition rather than the usual horror-movie refusal to leave an obviously dangerous place.

Usha Krishnan brings an immediate tenderness to Paati. Her scenes don’t feel like generic flashbacks solely to explain Gayatri’s eventual strength. The relationship gives the movie a history, reminding us that Gayatri isn’t discovering Yoga through Reyna’s studio. She’s returning to something that existed before the studio and will continue long after its fashionable version has disappeared. She gives Paati humor, authority, and an understanding of Gayatri that reaches across time. Her presence remains important even when the movie has moved into louder and more violent territory.

Angela Sant’Albano’s Judy initially seems like the friend who accidentally leads the protagonist into danger. The role becomes more complicated as the studio’s influence exposes her need for acceptance and proximity to status. Judy enjoys the rewards of the space enough to excuse behavior she would recognize as offensive elsewhere. Sant’Albano is particularly good at showing how quickly Judy can alternate between loyalty and self-preservation. She isn’t “cruel,” and that makes her decisions more frustrating. Her friendship with Gayatri keeps colliding with the benefits she receives from participating in Reyna’s system.

Rish and Kanish call the film masala rather than assigning it to one conventional category, and its genre twists aren’t subtle. The comedy gradually takes on the structure of a workplace thriller. Training sequences borrow from sports dramas, memories of Paati provide family melodrama, and the retreat pushes the story toward supernatural horror and mythological spectacle. The mixture shouldn’t hold together as well as it does. A joke about performative inclusion can sit beside an ominous ritual, a sincere family memory, or an explosion of color and movement without making the previous scene feel meaningless. The movie’s emotional commitment allows it to survive transitions that would collapse in a less confident production.

Samudranil Chatterjee’s cinematography distinguishes the sterile luxury of the studio from Gayatri’s memories and the almost feverish imagery that arrives later. Reyna’s environment is appealing in a calculated way, with surfaces designed to look natural after considerable expense. The mythological passages replace that controlled calm with movement, saturated imagery, and scale. Minolae Jain’s production design and Oona Natesan’s costumes contribute heavily to that contrast. The studio initially appears welcoming enough to explain why Gayatri stays, but its calculated serenity begins feeling restrictive. The makeup and effects work become increasingly important as the comedy gives way to physical horror. The movie doesn’t abandon its satire once the terror enters the story. It makes the satire literal, turning cultural extraction into something that can be seen on bodies rather than discussed only through dialogue.

The final stretch is big, strange, and considerably more sincere than the title might suggest. Rish and Kanish aren’t mocking Yoga or the people searching for something meaningful through it. Their anger is directed at institutions that remove a practice from its history, place a price on the remains, and congratulate themselves for making it accessible. That distinction keeps NAMASLAY from becoming an argument that cultural traditions must remain sealed away. The film isn’t opposed to sharing. It is opposed to taking without listening, profiting without acknowledgment, and welcoming people only after their identities become commercially valuable.

The result is alive with purpose. Srikanth-Talim gives its outrage a human foundation, Moore turns wellness language into a weapon, and the filmmakers deliver spectacle without losing sight of the personal grief underneath it. The movie’s cultural reckoning works because Gayatri isn’t fighting to keep Yoga for herself. She is fighting for the right to recognize it after everyone around her has tried to sell her a replacement.

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[photo courtesy of JUNGHAL STUDIOS, KHRISP ENTERTAINMENT, JUNGHAL STUDIOS]

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