Chaar Diwari director Syed Shadan thinks Hindi cinema is insecure about horror films

A still from the short film. Pics/By Special Arrangement, Instagram

Writer and director Syed Shadan isn't interested in making horror films about ghosts. What haunts him are ideas. His latest short, Chaar Diwari, which has become the only Indian offering screened at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival this year, is built around that belief.

"The implication of things is much more horrifying than defining what you should be scared of. That's why I've always been more interested in ideas that haunt us rather than ghosts. Here, the house itself is the ghost, swallowing people whole," said Shadan, of the film that premièred at the festival on July 31.

Anurag Kashyap and Syed Shadan

For Shadan, the problem with Hindi horror movies is two-fold. First, he has noticed that Bollywood doesn't trust the genre enough. "In Hindi cinema, we're insecure about our skills when it comes to horror. We always couple it with something else. Horror comes with comedy, thriller, or drama. We don't have the courage to make an out-and-out supernatural film," he said.

The second is the industry's tendency to resort to formulas. He points out that the success of the Hollywood film Obsession has reinforced that problem. "Production houses are now only looking for the next Obsession. The hunt for a formula is still there."