Indian Horror Movies That Actually Scare — The Real Good Ones

Indian horror has a bad reputation, and most of it is deserved. The genre spent two decades churning out low-budget haunted-house movies that no one was actually scared by. But since the mid-2010s a quiet renaissance has been happening, and the films on this list are the proof. Rahi Anil Barve's Tumbbad (2018) is the one to start with — a folk-horror fable about a cursed ancestral fortune, shot like a Guillermo del Toro film and rooted in Maharashtrian mythology. It is the best-looking Indian horror film ever made and quietly one of the most original horror films of the last decade globally. Amar Kaushik's Stree (2018) and its sequel Stree 2 (2024) did the opposite — they took village folklore about a female ghost who abducts men and turned it into comedy-horror with Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor, and they became two of the most commercially successful Indian horror films ever. Anvita Dutt's Bulbbul (2020) on Netflix is a period horror about a child bride in nineteenth-century Bengal — beautifully shot, thematically vicious. Prosit Roy's Pari (2018) with Anushka Sharma is genuine body-horror territory, one of the grimmest Hindi horror films of the decade. Vishal Furia's Chhorii (2021) is a female-centric supernatural film with Nushrratt Bharuccha, and Vishal Furia's earlier Marathi film Lapachhapi was its template. Vikas Bahl's Shaitaan (2024), Aditya Sarpotdar's Munjya (2024), and Hardik Mehta's Roohi (2021) keep the modern comedy-horror thread going. On the nostalgia end, 1920 (2008) and Raaz (2002) are the originals that taught the industry that Bollywood could do horror. Pawan Kripalani's Phobia (2016) is an underrated agoraphobia thriller with Radhika Apte. Every film is streamable free in HD on Bowood.TV — start with Tumbbad.