Kajol

Directed by Rajab Mahmood

2024

Brothers Productions Films

Another micro short film comes courtesy of Midlands filmmaker Rajab Mahmood who moves from his previous sci-fi stylings to a horror-tinged tale in a new project called Kajol.

Hot on the heels of their recently-reviewed Wrong Formula, the story opens with an enigmatic poster for “Grand Wizard” Shah Azeem who has advertised, at £50 a time of course, how he can speak to the dead.

We move to a room bathed in red light as Shah Azeem himself (an enjoyable Nisaro Karim) amusingly discusses with a client (Gurpreet Kaur as Simran) the troubles of finding a Birmingham location to conduct his séance sessions.

Dressed in ceremonial robes he reaches across a table to hold hands as he prepares to begin. Then states the blindingly obvious by mentioning he’ll be talking to someone who has passed on and who the person once loved and cherished

With this, Karim more than entertainingly embodies the worst pseudo-science kooks who claim to commune with those in the afterlife. And before long, the Shah very quickly asks for even more money to maintain his “connection” to this spiritual world.

With a touch of The League of Gentlemen, who so successfully parodied the weird and wonderful characters at the extreme edges of society - and then some - Kajol tries to poke similar fun at eccentric folk.

And like the LofG follow up show Inside No.9, the short also has a surprising twist ending that subverts many of the expectations set up to this point so far.

The film shifts from light-hearted and over-the-top into a more disturbing set of final shots. The change doesn’t just effect the tone but also the style as well. A little bit of effective SFX and a jolting ending shows once more the director squeezing as much as possible from the micro-film format.

In Hindi, Kajol can mean ‘beautiful eyes’ and this pays off in the final moments when Shah Azeem is surprised as anyone to find that his previously-suggested counterfeit claims could in fact have some real, and chilling, power.

The short is another good twisty tale from Rajab Mahmood helmed by two strong performances getting across the script in a short runtime. However, it would be great to see the filmmaker break beyond the strict boundaries of the micro-short, and fully flesh out their themes and also allow both actors and ideas some more breathing room.

As it is, Kajol is still a fun little project, mixing a couple of differing genres to a successful end as we see a fraudster getting a fright from their own spiritual scams.

★★★½

3.5/5

Michael Sales