5 Bollywood films that nailed the horror comedy genre

Horror comedy is a relatively new genre for Bollywood. Tt doesn’t mean that horror comedies weren’t made before but the numbers are just a handful. However, this new trend of horror comedies has definitely brought in a lot of excitement for the viewers. First and the most obvious reason for it is because everyone likes watching something different from the cliche masala flicks and the second, it seemed like the audience was getting kind of bored thanks to the same set stereotypical portrayal of a ghost. In the last few years however, we have seen in a surge in the numbers of Bollywood films being made in the horror comedy genre. Check out this list to find out times when Bollywood got the horror comedy genre right.

Stree (2018)
Director: Amar Kaushik



Stree is a film based upon the popular phenomenon called ‘Nale Ba’ (Come Tomorrow) that used to exist in the city of Bangalore in the 1990s, long before the city became India's Silicon Valley. The villagers used to write the words Nale Ba on their houses to ward off the evil spirit. This concept forms the crux of the film as well. Stree tells the story of a lovelorn trailer who falls for a girl who may or may or may not be the ‘Stree’. The duo of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K have done a phenomenal job by infusing comedy in this setup. We have seen Rajkummar Rao play the character of the loveable loser a few times before and with Stree, he nails it once again.



The scene in the climax where he makes a desperate Shah Rukh Khan imitation when asked to look at the ghost with love is sure to leave you in splits. Shraddha Kapoor portrays her role of the mysterious woman pretty well. The film also boasts a talented cast of Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Kurrana and Abhishek Banerjee who make a mark with their impressive performances.



Golmaal Again (2017)
Director: Rohit Shetty



Golmaal Again was the fourth installment to the very popular Golmaal series. Just like the previous installments, this one was directed by Rohit Shetty as well and starred Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi and Tushar Kapoor, who are familiar faces of the franchise. With Golmaal Again, Rohit Shetty opted to try his hands in the horror comedy genre, swaying away from the out and out comedies we saw in the previous three installments. While the genre was new for Rohit Shetty, this film was just as entertaining as his previous films.



The film revolves around four orphans trying to save their childhood home the ‘Jamnadas Orphanage’.



For this, they receive help from a ghost called Khushi (Parineeti Chopra), who was also at the orphanage with them as well. Golmaal Again went on to become one of the biggest hits of the year and also was the most successful one at the box-office out of all the four parts.

Go Goa Gone
Director: Krishna D.K and Raj Nidimoru



Go Goa Gone was Bollywood’s first attempt at a story which included zombies. In the film, we see Luv (Vir Das) & Hardik (Kunal Kemmu), two friends who are frustrated with their mundane lives and decide to go take a trip to Goa with their friend Bunny (Anand Tiwari), who is going there for a business trip. Upon reaching Goa, they find out about a rave party being hosted by the Russians on a private island. Out of the blue, the island became infested with zombies & thus the cat-n-mouse game of survival began. Filled with slapstick humour and plenty of exciting moments, Go Goa Gone makes for a two hour laughter marathon.



Saif Ali Khan was a treat to wacth as the Russian Mafioso "Boris" is in full form & his accented English. His dialogues "Let's Keel Ded People" & “Ha yaar, main Delhi se hoon bainchod" became pretty popular at the time of release.


Bhool Bhulaiya (2007)
Director: Priyadarshan



The movie showed a married couple Siddarth Chaturvedi (Shiney Ahuja) and Avni Chaturvedi (Vidya Balan) who were living in the US for the past few years coming back home and ignoring Siddarth’s family’s advice to live in the palatial house of his ancestors. Everyone is convinced that the house is haunted but the young couple doesn't think so. In the movie, it is shown that Avni gets fascinated by Manjulika, a lady who lost her love because of the evil king. As the movie moves ahead Vidya’s assumes the identity of Manjulika and now wants to take revenge from the king for her lost love. Siddharth calls his friend Dr. Aditya Shrivastav (Akshay Kumar) from America to help him with his trouble.


People were surprised when Priyadarshan chose to direct a film belonging to such a genre as he is most known for his situational comedies like Hera Pheri (2000) and Garam Masala (2005). However, we must admit he did an amazing job with Bhool Bhulaiiya as he was able to make the audience laugh along with giving them real goosebumps at the same time.

Chamatkar (1992)
Director: Rajiv Mehra



Chamatkar was released in the same year in which Shah Rukh Khan’s debut film Deewana hit the screens. A then relatively unknown Shah Rukh, portrayed the character of Sunder Srivastava. Sunder was a simple man who was convinced by his friend to come to Mumbai from his village ensuring him that he will get him a job in Dubai in exchange for money. Sunder gives him the money only to later find out that his friend used up the money to get himself to Dubai. A frustrated Sunder ends up in a graveyard where he vents his frustration and strikes the tombstone in helplessness, but immediately apologises to the deceased. This amuses the ghost of Amar Kumar - alias Marco (Naseeruddin Shah) - who was killed and thrown into the grave 20 years before, only to rise at Sunder's apology. Now, Sundar is Marco’s only connection to the real world and the only way to get revenge on Kunta (Tinnu Anand), the man who was the reason behind Marco’s death.



The camaraderie of Shah Rukh Khan and Naseeruddin Shah really makes the film a fun watch. The chemistry between Shah Rukh and Urmila Matondkar also were really exciting to see and made us wonder why was not this pair seen more often together.