Indian Horror to Stream This Halloween: 13 Films and Series, from Manichitrathazhu to Shaitaan

The film every later Indian psychological horror owes something to. Fazil directed, from Madhu Muttam's script, with Mohanlal as a psychiatrist called to an ancestral mansion and Shobana as the woman who appears to be possessed by a dancer named Nagavalli. Shobana won the National Film Award for Best Actress. It was remade as Apthamitra in Kannada, Chandramukhi in Tamil, Rajmohol in Bengali and Bhool Bhulaiyaa in Hindi.

Vikram K. Kumar shot this simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil, where it is called Yavarum Nalam. R. Madhavan moves into flat 13B and finds that a television serial only his set can receive is showing his own family, with events that then happen to them. The Tamil version was a hit, the Hindi one less so, and it has since built a cult following.

Karthik Subbaraj's first feature, with Vijay Sethupathi as a pizza delivery man trapped in a customer's house. It was made for about ₹1.5 crore, it plays with what the audience thinks it is watching, and it made both the director and the actor. It was remade in Kannada, Hindi and Bengali and was followed by two more Pizza films.

Jay K.'s film is a dybbuk story set in Kochi. A couple, played by Prithviraj Sukumaran and Priya Anand, buy an antique box, and what is inside it goes back to a Jewish boy and a Christian girl in 1941. Tovino Thomas co-stars. It uses Kerala's Jewish history rather than borrowing a Hollywood setting, and Jay K. remade it in Hindi as Dybbuk (2021) with Emraan Hashmi.

Netflix's three-episode Hindi miniseries, written and directed by Patrick Graham and produced with Blumhouse and Anurag Kashyap's Phantom Films. In an authoritarian near-future India, an interrogator played by Radhika Apte questions a prisoner, played by Mahesh Balraj, who turns out to be something from Arab folklore. Manav Kaul co-stars. It is short enough for one evening.

Rahi Anil Barve started writing it in 1993, and it reached cinemas twenty-five years later. Sohum Shah plays a man from a Maharashtra village who keeps climbing down into the womb of a goddess to steal gold from the cursed god sleeping there. It won Filmfare awards for cinematography, art direction and sound design but earned modestly in 2018. Its reputation grew on streaming, and the 2024 re-release earned more than double the original run.

Anvita Dutt's debut as a director went straight to Netflix. Set in the Bengal Presidency of the 1880s, it follows a child bride, played as an adult by Tripti Dimri, and a series of killings the villagers blame on a chudail. It looks like a painting, every frame washed in red, and it is a revenge story more than a scary one. Anushka Sharma's Clean Slate Filmz produced it.

Vishal Furia remade his own Marathi film, Lapachhapi, in Hindi for Prime Video. Nushrratt Bharuccha plays a pregnant woman hidden in a farmhouse surrounded by sugarcane fields, where she learns what the village does to unborn daughters. A sequel, Chhorii 2, followed in April 2025.

Rahul Sadasivan's film premiered directly on SonyLIV. Revathi and Shane Nigam play a mother and son who cannot afford to leave a rented house where something is wrong. It is as much about grief, unemployment and depression as about the house, and it scares with very few jump scares. Revathi won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actress.

Sai Kiran's Telugu debut, with Sangeetha as a single mother whose daughter is haunted after finding a bracelet. The story runs from 1989 to the present. It is long, but it was a small, well-liked hit and one of the better straight horror films Telugu cinema has made recently.

Karthik Varma Dandu directed and co-wrote with Sukumar. A string of unexplained deaths in a forest village called Rudravanam in 1991 traces back to a curse from 1979. Sai Dharam Tej and Samyuktha star. It grossed an estimated ₹122.85 crore, one of the biggest Telugu hits of its year, which is rare for a horror film.

Rahul Sadasivan again, this time with Mammootty, in black and white. In 17th-century Malabar a folk singer, played by Arjun Ashokan, takes shelter in a crumbling mansion run by a master and his cook, and cannot leave. It is a three-person chamber piece and one of the most striking-looking Indian films of the decade.

Vikas Bahl's Hindi remake of the Gujarati film Vash. A stranger, played by R. Madhavan, talks his way into a family's farmhouse and takes control of their teenage daughter. Ajay Devgn and Jyothika play the parents. It grossed an estimated ₹211.06 crore worldwide, one of the five highest-grossing Hindi films of 2024.