On a journey between noble houses, Thevan and his companion rest in a forest where an alien presence manifests in rustling sounds that pierce the night. Despite warnings to keep the fire burning as a ward against spirits, Thevansuccumbs to sleep. Awakening to darkness, he finds only dying embers and witnesses a Yakshi spirit, veiled in beauty, drawing his companion toward certain doom. Powerless against the illusion, the cowardly Tevan flees, stumbling through the forest until he discovers a weathered portal—entrance to a mana, a Brahmin’s domain.

 Here dwells a demon alongside his servant–cook, another soul who, like Thevan, stumbled into this trap with no escape. “Once you cross the estate’s threshold, it becomes rivers, valleys, and mountains,” the old-timer instructs. Initially dismissing this as mere metaphor for the estate’s vastness, Thevan soon discovers this realm operates as a pocket-dimension where time is warped, the nights stretch interminably. The house rules prove far from hospitable: the darkest gallery is forbidden, the demon must not be angered, and any attempt to escape brings forth blood. Though, somewhere within this labyrinthine mansion rests a key to the chamber of the demon’s “eternal” flame, and perhaps therein…

“Brahma-Yuga” is a deviation of Kali-Yuga, an epoch that concludes each thousand Maha-Yugas, collectively forming a Kalpa—a single day in the 100-year existence of the supreme deity Brahma, yet equal to 4.32 billion earthly years. The film interweaves such threads of Indian folklore, and those who pay attention and follow its mounting tension may find themselves spiraling into the narrative’s claustrophobic embrace, much as Thevan is confined within the demon’s lair.

The demonic entity takes human form through 72-year-old Mammootty, a mega-star of Mollywood (South India’s answer to Bollywood) with a career spanning over 400 films, predominantly as the lead. Largely due to his nuanced portrayal of the monster—complete with spontaneous bursts of infernal laughter—the atmospheric dreadsteadily ratchets up. Mammootty’s magnetic presence is so compelling that his character’s aura lingers even in scenes where he’s physically absent. Amplifying this unsettling atmosphere, the director Rahul Sadasivan opted for stark black and white cinematography—likely the first time an entire generation of Kerala’s moviegoers has a monochrome film in theaters. And perhaps not by chance do those symmetricalmounds of rice flanking the manor’s granary echothe famous shot from “Solaris.”

Some might view this work with skepticism, arguing that it falls short as a horror film due to its sparse outright scares. Nevertheless, “Bramayugam” is a well-crafted gothic epic that reads as an allegory for power, corruption, and subjugation: its characters regularly grab each other by the throat, caught in cycles of dependency and brutality. Though class warfare may invert the social order—the last becoming first—the most malevolent and dangerous force across all realms and ages remains humanity itself.