Amazon’s Khauf Lifts The Horror Genre Beyond The Creaky Door

Amazon’s Khauf  Lifts  The  Horror Genre Beyond The Creaky Door

Rating: ****

Khauf directed by the duo Pankaj Kumar and Surya Balakrishnan,  tells us in  eight  episodes things about life for single girls  in Delhi that we may not enjoy  hearing; but we nevertheless need to know   how girls are  jostled  sexually in public places , how  girls  when  enjoying themselves  are considered sluts whereas men partying is  normal,or they can be accompanied  by women who then qualify as  party animals  and not sluts.

In Khauf, the  borderlines  of  decent behaviour  are crossed frequently. A  bunch of girls  have locked themselves  away in the  dingiest  hostel seen since man invented these travesties of architecture to keep women “safe” from harm.

Turns  out the women in  Khauf are threatened  by those very men who design fortresses for women.  The women trapped  in the hostel are plucky fighters.They  rally together to  fight  a  supernatural threat: a  young man who barges into their New Year celebration and tells them what he would like to do to them with an iron rod.

Nirbhaya’ soul stirs the hosteliers. The  oldest woman of the group(Priyanka Setia) who is also pregnant, takes charge  of  the  threat.What  follows is neither  pleasant nor improbable.

 Khauf is like  an intricate jigsaw with missing pieces and pieces that don’t really fit in.This absence of  symmetry and vindication  gives  the series  a headstart as compared  with  more conventional fright flights. This is  not the Delhi  from Pink. It is  a much dangerous  for women where your spirit can be trammeled if  you aren’t  careful.

There is  a cop, a mother of a missing boy, played by  the ever-cogent Mishra (Gitanjali Kulakani) and her  hostel warden friend Gracie Dung Dung(Shalini Vatsa).  A strange bond of dereliction ties these two ruined  single  women  together. An entire series can be comfortably  made on this uncomfortable alliance.

And who exactly is that creepy Hakim(played  with brilliant dread by Rajat Kapoor): is he an eerie  healer or  a student of Satan? Can the law get him? Kapoor  role as  the evil exorcist is  defined by  a huge  ambiguity.Is this selfstyled ghoul-buster even human?!

Khauf is  the kind of unusual series where discomfort and obliqueness show the way out of the tunnel. There is a constant flow of  messy subplots that do not add  up.They are  not meant to. Standing at the centre of the chaos is Madhu(played with habitual fidelity by Monika Panwar).  Leaving her  murky past behind  in Gwalior,  Madhu is in Delhi to make  a new life for herself, provided death and  man’s  slaughter permit.

Panwar embraces  all her  characters’ trauma unconditionally.  She  wants  her character to be as  much at peace as we do. Everywhere Madhu is   assailed by the stench of annihilation. The  character is well played  , and I don’t mean just the actress, but also destiny.

 Khauf is  more a metaphor on violence against women than a horror show. In fact by the end  of the eighth  episode I  was wondering why the  ghoul was in the plot pool. This  series would have  benefited  without the supernatural  scare giver. The humans provide enough scares.

  Before I  quit  ruminating over the reams of soured dreams and subverted hostel life,there is one more performance  I must single  out. Rashmi Zurail Mann as the troubled  speech  impaired Nikki,   mirrors  all the raging anxieties that make Khauf the best horror  series  since the devil got into our cinema.