Indians have a weird love for everything “out of the world”. Be with being obsessed with someone’s religion or the complete opposite, obsessed with ghosts and supernatural beings and our Indian cinema has fed generously to our needs. Be it the regional or Bollywood, we have seen an array of those coming up every now and then.
But it is only during the recent few years that there has been quite an increase in the number of horror movies, web series, and shows being released everywhere. This increase was significant with the rise of OTT platforms, as OTT provides an unhinged platform for the content that usually cannot be released on the silver screen. OTT platforms have provided safe space for such content and now we are seeing a much higher increase in the rates of such content being released in the OTT scene.
But why has there been such an increase? The rise in OTT platforms can’t be the only answer. Since the 80s, 90s, and even times before that after that we have seen horror and suspense thrillers only releasing on the silver screen and we have seen a lot. Then we come across the movies and series made in Hollywood and as we compare these, we always find the latter a much better option. Our industry in some way failed to give us good content especially when it came to the excessive, unwanted makeup on the “ghosts”, superficial CGI, romanticized human-spirit relationships and overall the concept of afterlife just made it even more unwatchable and somewhat intolerable and hence we have seen quite a lot failing in the box office.
But now in the advent of time and better technologies, script, story writings, and much better plot of suspense, the Indian industry has been able to cater to those needs that we earlier got from Hollywood quite well. Now, there have been shows and movies that don’t need to show complete moving, walking ghosts to give us good jump scares, the sheer feeling of a presence is enough and this series, shows, and movies have come to almost nailing this.
Then again, we have always seen this habit that flows in the Indian industry, that if the audience starts loving a certain genre, it will only produce such kinds to a point that we just end up with really artificial stories. The same case has been seen with romantic, rom-com, comedy, and also patriotic movies. Then entered the genre of crime and thriller and now even though it is still giving some really solid ones, it is becoming another overpopulated genre.
With the next few releases that mostly have supernatural, horror movies, series and shows lined up for the next 2-3 months. Will this quickly become another overpopulated genre?