<\/p>\n
Long written off as fringe, horror is back in India’s Bollywood, reinvented with comedy, mythology and big stars powering a box-office renaissance.<\/p>\n
“There are new stories, fresh talent, and all of this is leading to a resurgence,” said director Deepak Ramsay of the renowned filmmaking family, which has created around 30 horror titles over the decades.<\/p>\n
“Films that were once niche are turning out to be blockbusters.”<\/p>\n
Once dismissed as pulp, bigger budgets, sophisticated special effects and A-list casts are pulling Bollywood horror out of the shadows.<\/p>\n
“There is a huge audience wanting to watch such movies,” said director Aditya Sarpotdar, whose film “Thamma” — touted as India’s first vampire movie — releases this October.<\/p>\n
Billed as a “bloody love story”, it stars popular actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna, and blends Bollywood’s signature song-and-dance numbers with werewolves and sharp fangs.<\/p>\n
Ramsay credits some the genre’s new-found success to prosthetics and computer-generated effects that have “gone to the next level”, noting that budgets have also shot up.<\/p>\n
From as little as $25,000 to make a horror film, “now budgets are closer to $9 million”, he said.<\/p>\n
Bollywood’s horror history runs deep.<\/p>\n
The 1949 black-and-white hit “Mahal” is widely regarded as the first Hindi horror film, when Kamal Amrohi’s supernatural tale of a reincarnated lover introduced a striking aesthetic.<\/p>\n
– ‘Get scared’ –<\/p>\n
The Ramsay Brothers pushed the genre forward in the 1970s and 1980s, with low-budget “creature” features in the style of Britain’s “Hammer House of Horror”.<\/p>\n
But despite occasional standouts, horror became associated with shoestring budgets, cheap effects and lesser-known actors.<\/p>\n
“None of the big stars would be interested because the budgets were small,” Ramsay said.<\/p>\n
And with horror films often restricted to adult viewers, “almost 50 percent of the audience would be cut off”, he added.<\/p>\n
Even so, the Ramsays had a winning formula: Blood and sex pulled in crowds with lurid gore and scantily clad women.<\/p>\n
A slow shift began in the 2000s, with Ajay Devgn starring in the 2003 success “Bhoot” (“Ghost”), while Akshay Kumar led cult hit “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” in 2007, a landmark that mixed psychological thriller and comedy.<\/p>\n
The broader popular rise began in 2018 with “Tumbbad” — the first Indian film to open Venice Critics’ Week — and “Stree”, which drew on folklore and mythology to captivate audiences.<\/p>\n
Today’s filmmakers are increasingly blending genres.<\/p>\n
“There’s a very thin line between horror and comedy,” Ram Gopal Varma, who directed “Bhoot”, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“The moment you get scared, your first reaction after the shock is to laugh.”<\/p>\n
– Biggest star –<\/p>\n
Sarpotdar said the lighter approach broadened the appeal.<\/p>\n
“When catering to mass audiences, humour becomes key,” he said.<\/p>\n
His 2024 hit “Munjya”, a 12A-rated tale of a vengeful spirit who wants to get married, turned into a family outing.<\/p>\n
“Children pulled their parents to theatres,” he said.<\/p>\n
Despite recent success, Sarpotdar believes Indian cinema has yet to give the genre its full due.<\/p>\n
“We always looked at horror as pulpy,” he said.<\/p>\n
He now has his eye on the ultimate prize: Bollywood’s biggest star.<\/p>\n
“I would love to see Shah Rukh Khan attempt horror,” said the director.<\/p>\n
“If these films are fun and entertaining, why not?”<\/p>\n
str-pjm\/ami<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long written off as fringe, horror is back in India’s Bollywood, reinvented with comedy, mythology and big stars powering a box-office renaissance. “There are new stories, fresh talent, and all of this is leading to a resurgence,” said director Deepak Ramsay of the renowned filmmaking family, which has created around 30 horror titles over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2070941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[388050,388049,329323,388052,388051,22578],"class_list":["post-2070940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-aditya-sarpotdar","tag-deepak-ramsay","tag-horror-film","tag-horror-history","tag-horror-titles","tag-india"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vampires-blood-and-dance-Bollywood-horror-goes-mainstream.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2070940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2070942,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2070940\/revisions\/2070942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2070941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2070940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2070940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2070940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}