Bramayugam

Seventeenth-century Kerala. Thevan, a folk singer fleeing the slave trade, takes shelter in a decaying mansion deep in the forest. Its owner is an old Brahmin with a single cook for company. The hospitality soon becomes a trap and leaving turns out to be impossible. Rahul Sadasivan directed. Mammootty plays the master of the house, Arjun Ashokan plays Thevan, Sidharth Bharathan the cook. The film is black and white throughout. That is not nostalgia; it is a tool chosen so the dark can actually be dark and the boundaries of the space dissolve. The horror comes out of Kerala's own stories, using local figures such as the yakshi and the chathan without translating them into Western templates. Mammootty's performance is the centre. An actor in his seventies taking a part like this at that point in his career was discussed at length in India. The subject is power: who feeds whom, who holds whom. Who it is for: viewers who like slow horror rooted in a single place. Who it is not for: anyone hunting jump scares; the tension here is built in conversation.