Grandma’s Tales of Ghouls and Gore: The Changing Narrative of Indian Horror Cinema
by Girinandini Singh
Growing up in the nineties and loving horror cinema in India was fantastical, eerie, and deliciously dramatic, but it also came with its fair share of slim pickings in narrative novelty, tired storylines, and a general lack of character development. There had been for a while a comfort with the portrayal of the traditional haunted house, buried family secrets, possessed women wronged by repressive male patriarchal heads looking for revenge, and let’s not forget the cases of demonically possessed totem items like dolls, mirrors, chairs, and grandfather clocks. Up until the last decade Indian horror cinema was happy drawing from a colonial aesthetic, inspired by Kipling-esque ghost stories and limited by the fractured Orientalist lens through which these stories were interpreted. We refused to move beyond this tried-and-tested formula, each new horror film a variation upon these elements. Only now have we begun to explore the nightmarish potency of our local lore, serving as fodder to create a new Indian horror genre.
The last year alone has been witness to a revival of horror cinema, with films like Tumbbad (Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad, 2018), Pari (Prosit Roy, 2018), Netflix Originals Stree (Amar Kaushik, 2018) and the miniseries Ghoul (2018). Writers and directors are deep-diving into India’s rich folkloric tradition for engaging material and the winding threads of these tales resonate with us because of their resemblance to the classic tales told at our grandmother’s lap. India is a country with a rich treasure trove of stories entwining oral histories, human histories, and fantastical elements, in a way which makes it all seem very everyday. Providing the best playground for horror and fantasy, which is why it’s been a shame that it has taken us this long to finally arrive at a place where we are comfortable owning and exploring the voice, the style, and the aesthetics of Indian folk horror.
Unlike Western folk horror, especially within Scandinavian and European cinema, fraught with Christian and pagan symbolism, and thus constricted by the strictures of good and evil, Indian folk horror deals with multitudes and layers of good and evil. These tales lie in the grey areas, interpreted within the framework of contemporary life which is neither black nor white. The bad, the evil, and the monstrous live within degrees of monstrosity and therefore as fantastical elements go they have a believability because there is no clearly defined line between purely good or purely evil.
India’s staggeringly vast folk heritage is seen giving an impetus to movies like Pari, which looks at the Ifrit mythology. Ifrits are enormous winged creatures of fire who can be either male or female, and live in underground dwellings like caves and ruins. Part of the Persian mythos, and later adopted by Indian folklore when the two cultures merged, Ifrits (Djinns) have haunted the Indian imaginations and have populated many a tale shared around the fire in Indian villages and even in cosmopolitan cities like New Delhi, with its vibrant mythology of Djinns—known by many as the city of Djinns. Pari takes this deeply embedded folk element and brings it to contemporary cinema, following the story of the child of an Ifrit. As an antagonist she is at times fearsome, at times otherworldly, at times human, and thus at times even redeemable. There is nothing absolute in her monstrosity; her nature is defined by her choices and as we see that character grow, sometimes these choices can be kind and can even come from a place of love. This is what makes it interesting as a horror film—the layers of emotions that are on display, beyond the primal experience of fear. In fact the movie delves deep into the question of who the real monster is: the man facing the so-called monstrous Ifrit, by beheading the spirit at birth as a newborn babe, or the Ifrit that consciously chooses to give up its own child for a normalized human upbringing in the hope of letting the environment nurture it into a creature that is more than a monster.
Horror is rarely about the supernatural; rather it is about drawing upon our own fears. The supernatural simply becomes the perfect blank canvas upon which to reflect these internal fears, much as the “Tell Tale Heart” fear resides in human guilt, greed, envy, and darkness. The best of horror cinema draws upon this fundamental darkness that is already lying within us, bringing it out into the open for us to perhaps see it for what it is and maybe even overcome it rather than fear it. Indian horror cinema has finally found the right vehicle to explore this primal emotion, and it is not through witch-women and cold specters in chains; rather it is by what is within us and how we welcome this new narrative, spine-chilling as it is, to thrill us, to scare us, and to make us think.
Girinandini Singh holds a Master in Design, Marketing and Communications from Domus Academy Milan (Italy) and a Master in Creative Writing from Newcastle University (United Kingdom). Her work has been included in the anthology Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature: A 10-Year Retrospective (2018). She also regularly contributes to Vogue India, Architectural Digest, Outlook Magazine India among others.