🇮🇳India

Indian horror's roots lie in the subcontinent's vast mythology of vengeful spirits, demonic entities, and karmic retribution, though the genre was slow to establish itself in cinema. Kamal Amrohi's Mahal (1949), a supernatural romance about reincarnation and obsessive love, introduced ghostly atmosphere to Indian film, and Hemen Gupta's Bees Saal Baad (1962) channelled the same Mahal template through a Hound-of-the-Baskervilles-style mystery. But it was not until the 1970s — following the international success of The Exorcist — that dedicated horror production began. Brothers Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay became the closest thing to horror specialists Indian cinema had, producing a long cycle of films beginning with Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972) and peaking with Purana Mandir (1984), their biggest hit; their Veerana (1988) and Bandh Darwaza (1990) closed the cycle. The Ramsay style borrowed freely from Hammer, Mario Bava, and American slashers, inserting songs and dance numbers into stories of ghosts, curses, and witches adapted to Indian settings — temples, crumbling havelis, and rural graveyards.

The Ramsay era's association with low-budget, low-status filmmaking left horror stigmatised in the Indian film industry. After Bandh Darwaza performed poorly at the box office, mainstream horror production nearly ceased for a decade. Ram Gopal Varma's Raat (1992) was a rare exception — a genuinely atmospheric ghost story that proved Indian horror could work without the Ramsay formula — and outside Hindi cinema, Fazil's Malayalam-language Manichitrathazhu (1993), starring Mohanlal and Shobana, became one of regional cinema's most beloved supernatural-thriller landmarks, later remade across multiple Indian languages including the Bollywood hit Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007). It took another decade before the Hindi genre revived. Vikram Bhatt's Raaz (2002) and Varma's Bhoot (2003) reignited commercial interest, with Bhatt continuing through the period-horror 1920 (2008) and a series of supernatural thrillers that, while uneven, demonstrated sustained audience appetite for horror.

The 2010s brought a new sophistication to Indian horror. Tumbbad (2018), a mythological horror about generational greed set against the backdrop of a rain-soaked village and an ancient goddess, earned critical acclaim for its visual ambition and narrative depth. Amar Kaushik's Stree (2018), based on the "Nale Ba" urban legend from Karnataka, proved that horror-comedy could achieve massive commercial success while drawing from genuinely local folklore. Prosit Roy's Pari (2018), with Anushka Sharma as a possessed woman with a folkloric secret, brought a darker register to mainstream horror, and Anvita Dutt's Bulbbul (2020) used a period setting and feminist subtext to reimagine the vengeful-spirit tradition.

The 2020s have produced Indian horror's commercial peak. Vishal Furia's Chhorii (2021) channelled female-foeticide trauma through a reincarnated-spirit framework. Maddock Films' Stree Cinematic Universe expanded with Amar Kaushik's werewolf-comedy Bhediya (2022) and the demonic-doll comedy Munjya (2024), culminating in Stree 2 (2024) — the highest-grossing Indian film of its year, a horror-comedy blockbuster that anchored a shared genre universe of a scale no other country has built around the form. Indian horror's enduring appeal lies in its connection to the subcontinent's deep traditions of supernatural belief — horror films serve as a space where anxieties about moral transgression, family honour, and the consequences of abandoning tradition find vivid, commercially viable expression.