The Anticipation Prior to the Enchantment
When Bramayugam was first announced, the audience for Malayalam cinema did not just get excited; they got obsessed. After decades of dramatic and crime roles, Mammootty was going to be acting in his first major gothic horror. It was going to be something special, a film based on the folklore of Kerala, shot entirely in black and white, and made like a dark poem with the attention to detail of a gothic horror. Directed by Rahul Sadasivan, who previously terrified viewers with Bhoothakaalam, this film was not just a release; it was an event.
The enigma was further enhanced by the release of every teaser, poster, and interview. Mammootty’s first appearance, with pale eyes and dark shadows surrounding him, with a grin that was both heavenly and hellish, was a sensation on social media. Fans speculated endlessly. Was he a phantom? A magician? The devil hiding in a a rapidly deteriorating ancestral home?
The anticipation went beyond the promise of horror film. It was an experience that was going to transform the Malayalam film industry’s approach to fear, power, and faith.
Inside The House of Curses
At its center, Bramayugam narrates the tale of Thevan (Arjun Ashokan), a nomadic singer who, while escaping enslavement, enters the abode of a sinister Brahmin lord (Mammootty). The house is old, quiet, and, in an odd way, alive. It serves as a shelter and, at the same time, a cage.
The hospitality the Brahmins offer Thevan is a veneer for his mental and emotional abuse. Thevan becomes aware of the peculiar way time and space function in the mansion. The food is odd, his reflections are altered by the mirrors, and disembodied voices murmur from the walls. Mammootty’s character is an uncanny combination of serene and menacing coolness, a Brahmin who has long crossed the limits of his humanity.
The unfolding of the story moves from a plot with ghosts towards one with the profound and morbid corruption of a soul, power, and history. The house, in turn, represents the soul’s moral decay. Every scene is draped in dread and the silence, with its palpable weight, concealed centuries and secrets.
Thevan’s Descent, Mammootty’s Reign
Arjun Ashokan gives one of his best performances as Thevan — a simple man trapped in a web of power he cannot understand. His fear feels real, not theatrical. His eyes tremble with exhaustion, disbelief, and hope, reminding viewers that terror isn’t just about jump scares — it’s about losing control over your own reality.
But it’s Mammootty who owns Bramayugam. His character is the embodiment of temptation — a man who believes he has transcended death, yet reeks of decay. Mammootty’s real-life calmness and controlled demeanor become terrifying when turned inward. He speaks softly, smiles briefly, and then commands the screen with quiet violence.
At 72, Mammootty could have taken the safer route — playing dignified father figures or patriarchs. Instead, he chose to haunt audiences with one of the darkest roles in his career. The decision reflected his late-career reinvention — from Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam to Puzhu and now Bramayugam, he’s been fearlessly exploring the strange and uncomfortable corners of human psychology.
His transformation wasn’t just physical. The production team revealed that he spent weeks perfecting a specific walking pattern — slow, deliberate, predatory — inspired by temple serpents and shadow puppetry movements.
The House That Ate Time
Cinematographer Shehnad Jalal and production designer Jothish Shankar created a world that breathes ancient dust. The black-and-white palette was not a mere aesthetic choice. It was a deliberate means of desaturating the world even further to foreground texture — the sheen of sweat, the fissures in stone, and the cold flicker of oil lamps. Every shadow hides a story.
The mansion, for the most part built on set rather than built digitally, was constructed with uncanny detail. Even the flickering of candles and the echo of footsteps were captured in real time to give the olfactory sense of claustrophobia. The sound design employed faint Sanskrit chants, reversed and overlapped to create an unsettling hum that pursues the viewer querulously.
The most haunting moments — Thevan discovering a feast that turns to rot before his eyes — took more than four days to film. The food props, made of gelatin and raw meats, were left to rot under scorching lamps. Even the actors supposedly lost their appetite due to the smell.
Expectations vs. Reality
Fans imagined a tricked-out supernatural thriller, replete with screaming fits. What audience members could not imagine was a slow, hypnotic descent of obsession, greed, and spiritual decay. Some audience members walked out. This was unfortunate, as for a great many others, the movie was a testament to Indian horror as a thriller, horror movie, and cerebral horror.
Brayamugam was “Malayalam The Shining” to critics. Located and steeped in local culture. The old Malayalam and Sanskrit inflected dialogues of the film spun culture and mythology around the conversations and then around the film and its narrative.
The “glacial” pace of the film, as some audience members called it, was one of the features that sparked intimate horror during its stillness. The audience did not view Brayamugam; they experienced it, as if in a deep, dark shrine, and the homage to the film was the dead flame of a temple lamp, its light exhausted, while the worship was built to a crescendo.
The Men Behind the Magic
Sadasivan rahul the director, while scripting, was reported for groundwork on folklore for many moons. After many fledgling attempts and folklore study, he finally couched a narrative that spoke of Indian horror, and intersection of history, class, and metaphysics, woven as a tapestry. The concept of the house in the film was drawn from an actual legend he heard as a child, about a Namboothiri, who by perfecting chants that rotted him metaphysically, became an immortal, and lived as a decaying, rotting, immortal.
Every production is faced with various challenges. To shoot in black and white required contrived lighting apparatus. To conserve shadows, the team worked almost in darkness. During the long take in which Thevan runs through a corridor filled with smoke, Arjun Ashokan fainted twice. At the climactic scene, where the character’s face contorts and is in pain, Mammootty worked for hours with prosthetics and refused to take a body double for the scene. He did this scene with the climactic scene with pain face distorted instead of CGI.
Whispers After the Curtains Fell
After the film was released, rumors suggested there were deleted scenes that were too “disturbing” for the audience. One was said to depict a full ritual sequence with blood-letting and possession. The director’s silence regarding this only showcased the ritual.
The film’s unfinished, ambiguous ending, where time resets and Thevan’s fate is undecided, is another highly discussed topic. Some of the film’s audience believed the cycle was eternal, while others thought it was a metaphor for the caste and power hierarchy in India.
Beyond the theories, Bramayugam stands proof of what Malayalam cinema is capable of. It is a horror film that whispers. And sometimes, that whisper is what is hardest to forget.
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