Back in 1967, Lakshmi (Shanthi Krishna) comes home to witness her niece, Nithya (Sai Pallavi), playing with a piece of thread, having been completely dissociated from reality, while surrounded by the dead bodies of her family members. Her mental state and reaction upon seeing her aunt leads us to believe that she is the killer.Athiran 2019
The story then shifts to an eerie mental asylum set in the wilderness 5 years later where Dr. Kannan Nair (Fahadh Faasil), a psychiatrist, has come to inspect the place. We are introduced to the 5 resident patients, Renuka (Lena), the caretaker and Dr. Benjamin (Atul Kulkarni), who is the main doctor there, he is also the owner of the place.
Upon meeting Dr. Benjamin, Dr. Nair is upset about the whole setup of the asylum and continues to question Benjamin’s integrity as a doctor. Dr Benjamin says he will make Dr. Nair see how good of a psychiatrist he is by hypnotizing him. Dr. Nair notices that, although there are only five patients on the records; there seems to be a sixth patient, Nithya, who happened to be chained in a cell hidden away from the public’s eye. Dr. Nair demands to see her, accusing that the treatment methods adopted by Dr. Benjamin is primitive, illogical and illegal, upon which Dr Benjamin states that Nithya is his daughter and that he has her locked away because she is too dangerous.
Dr. Nair proceeds to visit Nithya in her cell and enters it avoiding the guard’s warning to not do so, Nithya appears as a scary and sinister person, almost ghoul like. Nithya, upon spotting an intruder in her space hits Nair and he falls unconscious on the cell floor only to wake up in his room hours later. He records his day’s findings on his voice recorder and decides to explore the place a bit.