The Haunting’s Gul Panag: ‘In India, we haven’t done justice to the horror genre’

Actress Gul Panag, who also happens to be a pilot, feels that although there is a lot of scope in it, the horror-thriller genre still remains unexplored in India. Known for her work in films and series like Zwigato, The Ghost, The Family Man, Paatal Lok and Good Bad Girl, the actress is currently garnering a lot of attention for her performance in Amazon miniTV’s short film The Haunting, which also stars Erica Fernandes and Prakruti Mishra.

Directed by Tanveer Bookwala, the plot of the horror-thriller short revolves around Moushmi, who is accused of killing her best friend and roommate, but claims that it is a demon who made her do this and that she is innocent. A psychiatrist and a cop are now tasked to find out the truth. The series also features Archak Chhabra, Amitabh Ghanekar, Ankur Jain, Ajay Dhansu and Jhanvi Seriff.

Speaking about what she thinks about the genre, Gul told IANS, “Regarding the horror-thriller genre, I have two views - one as an actor and the other 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.”

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Citing an example of how the Korean and Japanese entertainment industries tackle horror-thrillers, the actress said, “Look at what the rest of the world is doing; how the Koreans are handling the horror genre. The Japanese, I think, 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.”