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@article{189236,
        author = {Binoy Varakil},
        title = {Day of Wrath, Night of the Uncanny: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Rahul Sadasivan’s _Diés Iraé_ (2025)},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {7},
        pages = {7782-7784},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=189236},
        abstract = {Rahul Sadasivan’s 2025 Malayalam horror film _Diés Iraé_ stages a cinematic confrontation between domestic intimacy and the spectral return of trauma. Through a psychoanalytic reading grounded in Freud’s theories of the uncanny (Freud, “Uncanny” 227), repression, and repetition compulsion; Jung’s archetype of the shadow and collective unconscious (Jung 284); and Lacan’s concepts of the Real, the Symbolic, and the symptom (Lacan, _Four Concepts_ 49), this article argues that the film constructs a multilayered psychic landscape where individual neurosis and cultural guilt intersect. The domestic spaces of the narrative become architectural metaphors for the unconscious, and the protagonist Rohan’s gradual descent into dread reflects the erosion of ego stability under disavowed histories that resurface as spectral forms. Ultimately, _Diés Iraé_ critiques Kerala’s modernity by exposing suppressed social wounds, transforming horror into a mode of ethical and cultural inquiry.},
        keywords = {Psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung, Lacan, Malayalam cinema, Horror studies, Uncanny, Repression, Shadow archetype, The Real, Symbolic order, Trauma theory, Domestic space, Spectrality, Repetition compulsion, Collective unconscious, Mirror stage, Cinematic architecture, Cultural guilt, Kerala modernity},
        month = {December},
        }