Paper short abstract:

The present paper investigates how Bollywood horror films imitate, appropriate and incorporate elements from SE and East Asian horror films and the cultural functionality and significance of these elements in contemporary Indian horror cinema.

Paper long abstract:

It would not be an overestimation to say that the most popular cinematic genre to emerge from East Asia in the past two decades is the horror film. It is evident not only from the ever increasing consumption of Asian horror cinema (most notably Japanese and South Korean, and more recently, Thai and Malaysian) worldwide, numerous Hollywood adaptations, but also from a vast body of academic researches dedicated to the subject. The most recent scholarship on the Asian horror films usually employs the analysis of circulation, dissemination and appropriation of various aesthetical and narrative elements within and outside the genre and implementing concepts like 'global gothic' or 'Asian gothic'. Curiously enough, the Indian horror film industry is almost exclusively omitted in these debates - despite the fact that in the past twenty years Indian horror cinema reanimated itself from B grade to the big budget Bollywood production, remaking or borrowing number of elements from East and South East Asian horror films. Taking into consideration some of the most recent Bollywood horror films (13B, Ragini MMS, Click, Alone) the present paper investigates how these horror films imitate, appropriate and incorporate elements from SE and East Asian horror films. In analyzing the cultural functionality and significance of these elements in contemporary Indian horror cinema, the paper especially aims to address the issue of placement and / or misplacement of Indian (gothic) horror in a global and Asian horror contexts.