Remember when Indian horror would make your mind curl? A familiar tune from Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) creeps into the theatre, or perhaps it’s the eerie silence before the knock on the door in Kaun? (1999). For many Indian moviegoers, horror once made you sit on the edge of your seat, leaving corridors darker and bedrooms a little less comforting. Somewhere along the way, though, the genre lost its bite in mainstream Indian films. Instead, international films like Obsession, Backrooms, Colony, and Weapons (2025) became the hype of the horror world.  But in the indie space, filmmakers are experimenting and owning fear through intimate, low-budget stories such as Waagh (2026), Ghormaal (2025) and Chait (2023), proving that genuine horror does not need spectacle. Simply imagination.

“The best horror films aren’t simply trying to scare you. They are using horror to talk about the anxieties of the world we live in. That’s what makes horror very interesting,” says writer-director Mukti Krishnan, whose psychological horror short Waagh (2026) was screened at one of the Mumbai Film Festival’s screenings this year. Krishnan believes Indian horror is witnessing a revival, but one that is unfolding largely within the independent filmmaking space. “There’s a lot of very interesting work coming out of the Malayalam film industry, and they are really delving into horror,” she says.