This spook never gets old: The Bollywood horror story

Hindi horror films are now slick and scary – but they’re haunted by filmmaking challenges.

An insecure Bollywood actress uses black magic to thwart the career of a newer, younger one. The ghost of a dead man possesses his daughter to estrange her from her mother and his ex-wife. Zombies take over Goa. Urban Indian witches regroup.

Scary story: In Aatma, Bipasha Basu plays a mother protecting her daughter from the ghost of her husband (Nawazuddin Siddiqui)

Kannan Iyer (left) , director of Ek Thi Daayan feels that “audiences have become so inured to horror that they almost demand a bumping up of the fear quotient.” “Earlier horror was apologetic. Today, it stands as proudly as any other normal genre of films,” says Suparn Verma, director, Aatma.