Bramayugam Movie Review

Director: Rahul Sadasivan
Cast: Mammootty, Arjun Ashokan, Sidharth Bharathan
Music: Christo Xavier
Producers: Chakravarthy Ramachandra, Sashikanth
Banner: Night Shift Studios, YNOT Studios
Release Date: 23-02-2024

With the most creative posters, Mammootty’s ‘Bramayugam’ created a lot of curiosity among cinephiles across various states in India. The movie was released recently, let’s see whether the movie lived up to the hype.

Story :

Movie is set in the 17th century where a low-born Thevan (Arjun Ashokan) is struck in a frighteningly huge forest and tries to escape from it by crossing the nearby river thereby he can reach his native place. However, it becomes impossible for him, and ends up at an ancient, almost abandoned mansion where he meets the house cook (Siddharth Bharatahan) and the mysterious owner of the house, Kodumon Potti (Mammootty). What follows next is a slow-poisonous survival drama that you should witness on the big screen.

Writing and Direction :

Rahul Sadasivan should be lauded for conceiving this kind of different subject with a star actor in Black and White color and releasing it as mainstream cinema.

This is a horror movie with a voice on sick morality, caste discrimination, and how power corrupts one in adhering to those traits. It’s like an interesting horror fable cinematized.

His writing had this slowness which itself is its benefit. It’s like something demonic crawling towards you, slowly but steadily and scarily, and with each minute passing, the figure appears to become mightier and scarier. It’s this fine slow building of suspense that keeps us tightly hooked to our seats in the first half.

One expects the second half to be even more exciting, however, Rahul underplays in the starting portions of the second half, this disappoints us, as he reveals twists simply. He might’ve believed that horror is in the suspense not in reveals. But with an astonishing climax, he gets back and ends his fable with a solid impact.

His direction was truly impressive. The staging and composition of shots, the extraction of amazing performances from actors. He was commendable as both a technician and a filmmaker.

Performance :

Mammootty is India’s finest actor now. He has given tremendous performances back-to-back in great subject-oriented movies in recent times. ‘Bramayugam’ is another great feather in his cap. Man unleashes a storm of fear as ‘Kodumon Potti’ through his facial expressions and tricky dialogue delivery. His performance will scare the hell out of you. Arjun Ashokan was excellent as ‘Thevan’. He evokes vulnerability like anything making his character very sympathetic. Siddharth Bharatan was good as the house cook with grey shades in character.

Technical departments :

Editing by Shafique Mohammed Ali is spookily amazing. Cinematography by Shehnad Jala was phenomenal. He achieved this terrific texture in Black and White visuals that feel terrifying but beautiful, real but surreal. There is a magnificent low-angle zoom-in shot at the interval capturing Mammootty in an incredible way where it feels like that character itself is looming over the audience.

Music by Christo Xavier was fantastic. The songs are just devoid of instrumentations, they consist of only vocals and they are pleasing enough. His score was remarkable, especially whenever Mammootty goes furious, the score is bound to give you chills.

Thumbs Up:

Mammootty’s performance
First half
Sound design and score

Thumbs Down:

Slow pace

Bottomline: ‘Bramayugam’ is a unique, powerful experimentation of horror