Horror tale: Can the female ghost save Bollywood?

While it’s true that Pathaan has given a new lease of life to Bollywood, we must also remember the onscreen ‘bhoot’ or to be more precise, the ‘haunted women’ that had saved Bollywood when the superstars were falling flat not so long ago.

It was the story of a possessed woman, played by Tabu, that had brought the family audiences back to theaters after the pandemic. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 was one of the biggest blockbusters of last year. The film ‘revived’ Bollywood. But it wasn’t just one film, if you notice there is a silent revival of the outdated, discarded 'horror genre’ in the last few years in Bollywood.

And in this updated version of horror genre, the winning ingredients seems to be a ‘haunted woman’ story with comedy elements and a dash of feminist narrative added to the ghostly yarn. This cocktail of fun and fright are hitting the bull’s eye more than ever.

This triumph of the ‘horror comedies’ can actually be traced back to its prequel, Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) when Manjulika’s ghost (Vidya Balan) had set the box office on fire. At that time the success of this horror-comedy was attributed only to the star power of Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan.

Post this, the somber Talaash (2012) bombed despite excellent performances by superstar Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan. There was a haunted woman in Talaash but the other major ingredient — the humour was missing.

It took Amar Kaushik’s Stree (2018) for Bollywood to open its eyes to the sub genre ‘horror comedy’. Inspired by an urban legend of Karnataka — Nale Ba, Stree was the story of a witch who lures and preys on men who cannot resist her sultry call. Made on a modest budget of 14 crores, the well-made Stree went on to earn more than 150 crores. The industry had now realised that horror mixed with comedy, satire and a simple feminist message was a solid success formula that needed to be milked.

Surprisingly, around the same time, when filmmakers tried to explore the horror genre minus the comic track, the films didn’t work. Anushka Sharma’s haunted-woman take in Pari (2018) and Anvitaa Dutt’s visually dazzling tale of women abuse in Bulbbul (2020) were talked about but not as successful as Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 or Stree.

In an attempt to repeat the Stree victory, more horror-comedies were churned out. But there were major misfires too. The Tamil blockbuster Kanchana (2011) was remade as Laxmii (2020) with Akshay Kumar as the hero possessed by a spirit of a transgender. This horror-comedy remake was so atrocious that it was branded a disaster even though it didn’t get a theatre release and directly landed on OTT.

The producers of Stree too followed the same template in their next horror-comedy Roohi (2021) but it lacked the slapstick humour and feminist nuances of Stree.

The bonding of bhoot and Bollywood continued. Saif Ali Khan-Arjun Kapoor’s Bhoot Police (2021), Varun Dhawan’s Bhediya (2022) and Katrina Kaif’s Phone Bhoot(2022) also failed. These films simply demonstrated Bollywood’s restlessness to repeat the formula of Stree and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 with no work done on the scripts. It also proved that horror-comedy genre is not everyone’s cup of tea.

If we go back, Bollywood has attempted horror comedies since 1960s. Legendary comic actor Mehmood's Bhoot Bungla (1965) could well be termed as the first horror-comedy. It had a haunted house, murders and Mehmood plus RD Burman. But those were the times of romantic and social dramas in Bollywood. Comedy was designated only to comic actors.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com