[1][20] The Kashmir Files received mixed reviews upon release,[1] with praise directed to its cinematography and the performances of the ensemble cast;[24] however its storyline attracted criticism for attempting to recast established history[11][12][25] and propagating Islamophobia.

After Bitta and his gang leave the house, Pushkar begs his doctor friend Mahesh Kumar to bring an ambulance and save Karan's life.

To ensure their safety, Pushkar and his family are taken by their journalist friend Vishnu Ram to Kaul, a Hindu poet who maintains a cordial relationship with Muslims.

[44] The entire film was shot in 30 days, largely in Mussoorie and Dehradun, along with a week-long shooting schedule in Kashmir, including at Dal Lake.

[53][52] Leader of the New Zealand First party Winston Peters accused the Classification Office of censoring the film based on its political content, and was supported by other politicians.

[60] The Kashmir Files was set to release theatrically worldwide on 26 January 2022, coinciding with India's Republic Day, but was postponed due to the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

[67] The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has endorsed and promoted the film in explicit terms,[25][68][69][70] which has led to significant audience at theatres making it a runaway commercial success.

[69][72] The BJP Information and Technology Cell, known for being the party's propaganda unit promoted the film with its head raising calls for people to watch it.

[69] Pro-government media were also involved in its promotion; OpIndia — a pro-Hindutva news portal — published several articles raining praises on the film and questioning the motives of critics as well as opposition parties while television channels hosted multiple shows and debates to the same ends.

[69] Following the release of the film, Agnihotri was provided with a Y-category security detail from the Central Reserve Police Force by the Ministry of Home Affairs, based on what an official described as inputs of perceived threat to the director's safety.

[78] Tanul Thakur, reviewing for The Wire, was scathing: the film—"monotonous", "inert", and featuring an "objectively poor screenplay"—was set up in an alternate reality and felt like iterations of collected WhatsApp screeds in service of a Hindu majoritarian state and especially Narendra Modi; Agnihotri lured the audience with facts only to distort and communalize them, and target those who are critical of the incumbent political government in India.

[79] Asim Ali, reviewing for Newslaundry, was also critical of the film, finding it to have exploited the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits in peddling a Hindu Nationalist worldview where no Muslim in Kashmir had any aspiration except persecuting Hindus.

[13][80] Shilajit Mitra of The New Indian Express panned the film with a rating of 1 out of 5 stars and castigated Agnihotri for exploiting the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits by doing away with all nuance in service of a "communal agenda".

[81] Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit academic, reviewing for The News Minute, held the work to be a communal and masculinist propaganda that collapsed the complex politics of Kashmir into a one-sided moral tale palatable to the current Hindutva dispensation in India; Agnihotri appropriated Pandit sufferings to portray all Kashmiri Muslims as barbarian invaders, undeserving of any solidarity.

[82] Alpana Kishore, one of the few journalists who had covered Kashmir in the 1990s (as part of Newstrack), found the film to be a set of factual episodes but strung together in a contextless fashion; Agnihotri did not bother to even portray the other side of the divide, and was brazen in pushing a pro-right agenda.

[83] Suparna Sharma, reviewing for Rolling Stone India, panned the film with a rating of 1 out of 5 stars: "neither cinematic nor historical", Agnihotri simply attempted to weaponize the tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits in pandering to the current sociopolitical climate.

[84] Writing for The Outlook Magazine, Ashutosh Bharadwaj noted the film to be deeply insensitive to Muslim claims and memories concerning the exodus; it bore evidence of India's refashioning into a Hindu majoritarian state.

[85][86] Anuj Kumar reviewing for The Hindu described the film as being composed of "some facts, some half-truths, and plenty of distortions" with brutally intense visualisations and compelling performances, aimed at inciting hatred against Muslims.

[23] Rohit Bhatnagar of The Free Press Journal found the screenplay and the individual performances to be sloppy, thus failing to make any mark; however, he admired the effort that went behind the film and rated it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

"[95] A Kashmiri Hindu immigrant to New Zealand told Stuff that The Kashmir Files was a good representation of the exodus, requesting that Muslims watch it to understand the other side of the conflict.

[99] Its key message — in line with Hindu Right views on the issue — is that what is known as the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was actually a "genocide" which was kept out of history textbooks and mainstream discourse deliberately.

[98] But the additional portrayal of militants forcing his wife to eat the blood-soaked rice was rejected by Ganjoo's brother as 'fiction'; he emphasized that the family was never consulted while making the film.

The massacre is depicted in the film as occurring in broad daylight in front of Kashmiri Muslim neighbours as passive participants, in contrast to the real event which happened in the dead of night with silenced guns and no witnesses.

[98] Article 370 of the Constitution, that granted nominally autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir and was in effect during the time frame of the film, is named as one of the factors behind the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits.

[98] The facts of Bitta Karate's long years of incarceration despite a lack of conviction or Malik's eventual conversion to non-violent means of struggle are not mentioned.

In Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, the scene of a woman being cut up by a mechanical saw was recreated with makeshift devices and emblazoned with the slogan, "Wake up Hindus, lest other states in India become Kashmir.

"[116] A BJP leader declared that, if Hindus did not draw the lesson from The Kashmir Files, eventually similar films would need to be made about Delhi, Bengal, Kerala and Khargone.

[116] The film's version of truth that Muslims formed a blood-thirsty community whole-heartedly supporting militants' assaults was believed liable to be replicated in other parts of India.

[124][125] It received massive push in the form of government support, national news coverage, social media forwards and word of mouth[118][126] and rode on them following its opening weekend.

[129][130] The film became a major competitor for the Akshay Kumar-starrer Bachchhan Paandey,[131] which was released one week after The Kashmir Files, and eroded its box office collections.