“Despite the fact that we are in the 21st century, our mind still carries the biases and superstitions of the old times, and much as we’d like to dismiss them, these are relevant for a part of us still believes,” says filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, whose thriller and a ‘worthy successor,’ Raaz - The Mystery Continues is rooted in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy. “With great special effects, great narrative and music, and young actors I would call this new horror,” Bhatt is all set to make you believe. If there is a God, then there is a ghost, believe all the Bhatts. Now that Vikram Bhatt too will be seen with his paranormal flick 1920, we get curious on his choice of genre. “If there is a black, there is a red,” he feels that today, horror’s matured into “human emotion, drama and interaction and not one mad man with an axe or five people telling a story and dying one by one”. Carrying on the new-found Hitchcockian effect, Vikram claims his 1920 will be scarier than Raaz. “It’s all about yin-yang, god versus the devil,” he feels that every director has a pet genre, his being the supernatural. “Aditya Chopra is best with love stories, Karan Johar and Bharjatiya ace at human relationships, as for me, it’s the adventure, the technicalities and special effects,” adds Bhatt. Despite technical difficulties, like lighting an entire palace with candles to create that ambience of fear or spending Rs 15 lakhs for polishing the floor after every shot, Bhatt enjoyed making this highly expensive film. “We shot in a haunted house, but we did not have any problems from the ghosts. I think they were quite happy that someone is making a film on them. You can even say the film is sponsored by spirits,” he laughs, a strong believer in the ‘spirited’ existence. “Just because modern physics doesn’t say so, doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” he asserts. Meanwhile, Bhatt is also working on two more subjects of the third kind - Purple Lake which is an intense thriller and Phir which is based on karma.

Gone are the days of shrieks and screams, beating drums and tribes, blood sucking vampires and icchaadari naags, aandhi and toofan. Today, with special effects and powerful scripts, directors are playing with the universal emotion of fear. Take Ram Gopal Varma - nimboos, crows and cats were his sinister props. On the other hand, Priydarshan’s script of a mentally ill, hallucinating Vidya Balan sent shivers down our spines. If we look at the subtext, the stories are also creating awareness on superstitions and questioning beliefs. “I feel being in awe of the unknown is human. Right from childhood, we are fed with ghost stories, so it’s natural to believe in them,” observes Jackie Shroff who did Bhoot Unkle and another horror flick, Sandhya which was never released. The director Sangeeth Sivan at that time felt the audiences were not ready. Like Ramu, he too felt that “there is as such no takers for horror in Bollywood, and that it requires a lot of technical expertise which is difficult for every director to master.”

Agrees award-winning filmmaker Wilson Louis who “loves making horror films”. In fact, his Ho Sakta Hai is an international winner and his Lonavala Khandala Ghaat gave many, goosebumps. Currently, the director is working on a live-action animation feature, Kaalo, a desert witch banished 500 years ago is back for revenge. “When I made Ho Sakta Hai, no one had tried the subject of black magic. It was something that I had experienced in Nasik, and it was this quest to understand the supernatural which got me spinning the yarn,” Wilson who feels that people in India are deprived of the supernatural stuff. “We all have our deja vu’s, hallucinations and intuitions, so why not put them on script and screen,” questions Louis, adding how the spooky genre’s back to haunt courtesy RGV’s ‘daredevilry’ to tread the path many filmmakers have bypassed. Joining the ranks is Pakistani director Omar Ali Khan with his horror tale, Zibahkhana: Hell’s Ground. It’s about five kids from Islamabad who hire a kitschy van to watch an all-night rock concert, get stoned, meet a creepy old man and are attacked by zombies who live near a poisoned river. What follows is a bloody encounter with a Burqa-clad mysterious killer whose spiked cast iron mace causes much damage. “It’s a great feeling to have an audience that gets the jokes, makes creepy noises and relishes the blood fest as well,” says Khan who’s grown up watching films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and My Bloody Valentine. “Unlike India’s Ramsay Brothers films, Pakistan does not have a tradition of horror films. I wanted to make a classic horror film while being anti-formulaic,” says Khan.