Trailer review: Usman Mukhtar’s Gulabo Rani is a promising venture into horror genre

Ahead of the its release later this month, Usman Mukhtar’s award-winning short film Gulabo Rani’s second trailer dropped on YouTube. Inspired by true events, the film’s 2-minute trailer is able to simultaneously evince a mixture of fear and excitement in the audience. Read More: Usman Mukhtar releases the haunting trailer of Gulabo Rani While the first trailer of the film hardly had any dialogues, the second trailer gave an insight into the narrative of the film by inclusion of more dialogues. The trailer opens with a boy starring right at the screen with fear and shock. This sets the tone for the entire trailer followed by shots of empty and dimly-lit corridors, flickering lights and creepy music. With descriptive phrases like ‘witness the unwitnessed’ in between the trailer coupled with unsettling shots, the trailer successfully instills a degree of fear with the curiosity of knowing what unfolds next. The story follows a boy, Akhtar, who is accepted into a 150-year-old university and finds himself registered in the shabby ‘Wing C’ building of the dorms. He is the victim of bullying by three students in the university who tell him spooky stories about the dorm he is living in. Akhtar finds himself in the middle of paranormal activities that instill in him a fear of the unknown.  The last shot of the film shows Akhtar on his knees with a creepy smile as he chants ‘Gulabo Rani’, raising the unanswered question of who is Gulabo Rani? The cast of the film includes a very enticing mix of young actors, namely Usama Javed Haider, Meiraj Haq, Danial Afzal, Natasha Ejaz and Omer Abdullah. Khushhal Khattak has a special appearance.