Rakshasudu () is a 2019 Indian Telugu-language psychological thriller film directed by Ramesh Varma. The film stars Bellamkonda Sreenivas and Anupama Parameswaran and it is the official remake of the 2018 Tamil film Ratsasan.
The music is composed by Ghibran, the film began production in March 2019. Movie was released on 2 August 2019. The film was a success at the box office.
Plot
Two elderly men discover the corpse of Samyuktha, a 15-year-old school student who was brutally murdered and wrapped in a polythene bag.
Arun Kumar is an aspiring filmmaker who wants to make a movie on psychopaths. After being rejected many times despite having a good script and due to pressure from his family, he decides to become a sub-inspector with the help of his brother-in-law, Prasad, a police officer himself. He moves in with his sister Sapna, Prasad, and their daughter Siri. Siri gets into trouble when she makes Arun forge her father's signature on her report card. Her class teacher Krishnaveni figures this out and thinks that she signed it herself. Siri brings Arun to her school to pretend to be her father. Later, when Siri is caught by her parents, they transfer her to another school. Arun then meets and befriends Krishnaveni and her niece Kavya, who is speech deprived.
A teenage schoolgirl named Amrutha is abducted on her way home. Her parents then find a mutilated doll's head in a gift box attached to their dog's collar. Arun finds a similarity between Samyuktha and Amrutha, both of them being 15-year-old school students who were kidnapped while returning from school. Just like Samyuktha, the hair on the doll's forehead is uprooted, the eyes are drilled, and her mouth is damaged. Apart from that, in particular, there is a knife mark on Samyuktha's forehead, ears and nasion. The same marks were found on the doll's face. He tries to convince ACP Lakshmi, his egotistical, superior officer, that this was a psychopath at work. However, his theories are brushed off as stories.
Later, Amrutha's brutally mutilated corpse is found. The killer drilled out her eyes, broke her teeth, and uprooted her hair in patches. On top of that, her body has stab wounds made while she was alive. Arun suggests the corpses be hidden to prevent the killer from gaining attention. Initially, the officials oppose this idea owing to breaking protocol, but they eventually move the bodies to a secret facility under Dr. Kishore. Soon after, another schoolgirl named Meera is abducted. She happened to be from Siri's former school. The search leads to a teacher named Somaraj, who works at Siri's current school and is revealed to be a pedophile preying on schoolgirls. Arun encounters Somaraj trying to molest Siri and beats him up before detaining him. Somaraj admits to being a sexual predator but denies having anything to do with the murders. In a bid to escape, he holds Venkat, a policeman, at gunpoint. Arun manages to gun Somaraj down inside the lift, thereby saving Venkat.
Meanwhile, Siri is abducted from her birthday party at home. Arun and Prasad discover her mutilated body in their car trunk, implying that she was also murdered. Things worsen for Arun, as he gets suspended for his negligence for shooting Somaraj. Dejected and angry, Arun investigates the case by himself, with the help of a few policemen. Finding an audio clip from the hearing aid of Meera, he traces it back to an elderly magician named Annabella George's performance at the victim's school function. The lady used her magic show as a ruse to kidnap the girls since she impressed all the students with her magic tricks. She invites one student to volunteer in an act and then interacts with the student to gain her trust. She stalks the selected student leading to their kidnapping the day after meeting them, without any hassle. This leads Arun to the next potential victim, a schoolgirl named Sanjana. Arun soon realises that he was following the wrong girl when he learns of Sanjana having a twin sister. Sanjana gets abducted, even though she was under surveillance. Arun tracks her location to a house in the city, where he narrowly saves Sanjana from being murdered. The perpetrator escapes, but is revealed to be Mary Fernandez, who was involved in a killing a long time ago. Arun finds more about the case from the investigating officer, Jaya Prakash, a retired cop.