We humans have this tendency of staying in our comfort zones and very few of us dare to come out of it and try something new. At times this is because the newer things are riskier and the chances of failure are high. Moreover, if staying in the comfort zone is profitable why would one even try getting out of it?
This applies to our Indian entertainment industry very well where the masala mass entertaining movies, that are either remakes of some old or regional movies or are a sequel in a franchise, gain big at the box office while a film with a strong impressive story is often considered boring. This repetition of the genre is nothing but the herd mentality that is being blindly followed by Bollywood, disregarding the art of filmmaking in the process.
From the above one need not infer that we are including every filmmaker under this criterion. There are some very brilliantly talented people who haven’t fallen into this trap and neither are going to. But what till now was more of a Bollywood problem, has now started to creep into the more contemporary and democratic OTT platforms.
OTT platforms initially served as a medium that provided creative freedom to express the ideas and issues that were neglected or overlooked purposely in the mainstream cinema due to censorship or family viewing norms or just a simple lack of willingness to take up a genuine social issue. But come to think of it, in the present situation it seems like everyone’s running behind the same genre in OTT and that is mostly thrillers and its sub-types.
Almost all the hit web series and films that gained success on the streaming platforms belonged to a category of a thriller that included ghastly scenes, blood and gore, obscene language, and so forth. Netflix’s ‘Sacred Games’, ‘Delhi Crimes’; Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Mirzapur’, ‘Paatal Lok’, ‘The Family Man‘, ‘Breathe’; Disney+Hotstar’s ‘Aarya’, ‘Criminal Justice’, ‘Special Ops’, ‘Hostages’; Voot’s ‘Asur’; SonyLIV’s ‘Your Honor’, ‘Undekhi’ or Zee5’s ‘Mafia’, ‘Lal Bazaar’, ‘Unlock’ are prime examples of the fact that edge of the seat is the experience audience craves for these days.
So if you don’t have the stomach for it or are bored of such intensity and want some light feel good content, you might barely manage to find something of your taste in the Indian content slate that has the popularity of that level. Other than a thriller, we Indians love watching biopics or content inspired from someone’s lives like Gunjan Saxena (Netflix), Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (SonyLIV) and so.
But apart from these two genres we hardly see any filmmaker exploring a different genre and even if someone does, the probability of it not going down well with the audience is high, acting as a forewarning for any such future experiments.
While we have simple heartwarming content like Amazon’s ‘Panchayat’ or Netflix’s ‘Little Things’ and ‘Mismatched’ they often get lost in the OTT platforms that are overcrowded with all the gripping and intriguing thrillers. Eventually, we can only hope with our fingers crossed that the curse of herd mentality spares the OTT platforms. 🤞