Chethma De Mel, Jadetimes Staff
C. J. De Mel is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Entertainment News
This year's Bollywood has seen a resurgence of horror films, including malevolent spirits, spooky zombies, and vengeful witches entreating the audiences and emerging amongst the biggest earners of 2024. With modest budgets, horror films show impressive returns; hence, everyone seems intrigued by the unlikely success that horror films have hit.
The month started off with the big box office clash between the huge-star cast action movie Singham Again and the horror-comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3. The former, starring Bollywood biggies like Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and Ranveer Singh grossed ₹1.86 billion ($22 million) worldwide within four days of its release. However, the Kartik Aaryan-starrer Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 scored a decent ₹1.63 billion during this time—an even better feat if one takes into consideration the less budget in which the movie was made.
In Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, Aaryan reprises the character of a conman exorcist tasked to rid a royal palace of evil spirits. What looked initially like a generic blend of humor and suspense is finding favor with audiences as theaters are filled nationwide. Its success underlines a new trend in Bollywood: horror and horror-comedy films, hitherto considered niche genres, have dominated box offices.
The trend started to set in with the psychological thriller Shaitan, starring Ajay Devgn, which pulled in more than $25 million at the box office despite its modest budget. Success also came from Munjya and Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank, the latter breaking all records with over $103 million in collections to emerge as the highest grosser among Hindi films of 2024. Based in the fictional town of Chanderi, Stree 2 narrates the spine-thrilling tale of how a vengeful spirit now targets independent women.
The two big-heartedly produced films, 'Dhamaka' and 'Bob Biswas', are a reflection of poor box-office returns the industry has been reaping since the pandemic. And yet, remarkably, horror films buck this trend. Despite receiving mixed reviews from film critics, they appear to attract audiences in droves. Film critic Mayank Shekhar says, "Horror-comedies work because fear and humor are primal instincts which are 'infectious' and engaging in the collective experience of the cinema.".
Films such as Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Stree 2 also have the added advantage of the success of their predecessors, which allows them to bypass critical reviews. As Apurva, a radio host who loves both the films, says, "I think we go because we loved the original film and want to feel the same magic in the sequels."
Horror surely has come a long way from the earlier days of Bollywood. While the Ramsay Brothers had set the trend for Hindi horror with shows of excess in ghosts and gore, films like Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche in 1972 and Purana Mandir in 1984 attracted a very limited adult audience in the 1970s and 80s. A decade later, with reinvented ghastly tales, a new breed of brothers, Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, joined hands with director Vikram Bhatt to reinvent horror with their Raaz series - an ideal blend of music and sensuality with the horror genre.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa, released in 2007, had been a milestone for Bollywood horror. The movie had Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan in the lead and successfully attained humor coupled with suspense. Later, in 2018, Stree spread its horror appeal by amalgamating it with social themes and thus became a hit even with family audiences.
Directors like Anees Bazmee have taken this shift seriously, and their films are more family-friendly. As Bazmee says, "I wanted to create a roller coaster experience: thrilling but not scarier than life and thus suitable for younger audiences". Bazmee has directed Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and 3.
Horror is pretty much about small-town settings, folklores, and universal themes lately. It is blending supernatural scares with moral lessons. Tumbbad spoke of greed through mythology and horror, and that's why it did so well. As a matter of fact, it was re-released this year.
While Bollywood horror films are rumoured to be making a comeback, it is way too early to look at the trend as something more than that: a trend. "Bhool Bhulaiyaa was perhaps the first to have created the horror-comedy genre, but it took many years for us to get another hit in the same genre-Stree," says Aditya Sarpotdar, director of a Marathi thriller film. Bazmee thinks it is eventually the story of the film that draws eyeballs into the theatres, regardless of genre.
Along with growing appetites for horror-comedies and well-knit storylines, it finally looks like the horror genre of Bollywood may grab a lasting position on the screens.
