Gul Panag says horror genre yet to reach its true potential in India

Mumbai: Actress Gul Panag, who is receiving a lot of appreciation for her work in the recently released streaming short film ‘The Haunting’, feels that the genre of horror is yet to reach its true potential in India and that the industry has barely scratched the surface when it comes to the genre.

The actress plays the role of a psychiatrist in the short film, which also stars Erica Fernandes and Prakruti Mishra. The horror short film revolves around a girl named Moushmi who has been possessed by ghosts and is accused of killing her closest friend. The film is said to be based on real events and is directed by Tanveer Bookwala.

Sharing her views on the horror genre, the actress said, “The horror-thriller genre I have two views on — one as an actor and two, as an audience. As an actor my view is that we haven’t done justice to the horror-thriller genre in India as we haven’t pushed the bar up or someone would say push the envelope as far as special effects is concerned. We have done one type of horror-thriller genre only. Whereas the scope is much larger”.

She also shed light on the international horror niche factoring in Korean and Japanese horror which have set benchmarks all over the world. She said, “Look at what the rest of the world is doing. Koreans are doing with their horror genre. The Japanese are intense. Of course, Hollywood has long done incredible horror. So, I think the scope to perform in horror, scope to be part of films with incredible visual effects is very large. Now, coming to me as an audience, I’m terrified of watching horror films personally. As an audience, which just goes to share that if you make brilliant films, the audience will be scared, which is the ultimate goal of a horror film”.

‘The Haunting’ is currently available on Amazon miniTV.
IANS