Bollywood Horrors

All told Bollywood Horrors is a welcome treatment of an underdiscussed topic within South Asian studies, media studies, and religious studies. The volume treats a variety of topics and perspectives, setting the standard for further exploration into a rich and largely untapped field. The volume is sure to interest scholars in the above-mentioned disciplines, as well as Bollywood and horror enthusiasts as well. * Reading Religion *
[T]he collection marks a promising start of critical discussions of the connections between Indian religion, myth, and Bollywood horror films. Apart from helping the global horror enthusiast take a notable step toward exploring the wide variety of Bollywood horrors, these essays will aid scholars of religious studies by drawing attention to the notable afterlives of the avenging female goddess of Hindu religion as well as the vilification of tantraand its followers across cultures. Most importantly, the collection caters to the cross-cultural approach of religious studies when it explains the notable similarities between the male viewers of Bollywood horrors and American slasher films. * The Journal of Gods and Monsters *
[T]his anthology’s breadth is also its strength: Bollywood Horrors is not principally a book for horror film scholars, but its wide range of texts and approaches opens it up to a much broader audience and readership. * Journal of Religion & Film *
This phenomenal collection explores a complex cinematic genre through the lenses of religious studies, aesthetics, and socio-political issues in India. Each chapter is illuminating on its own, and the book, as a whole, richly theorizes the horror genre within the cultural context of South Asia. The book will be of great interest to anyone in the fields of Religious Studies, Cinema Studies, South Asian Studies, and Critical Theory. * Daniel M. Stuart, Associate Professor of Asian and Buddhist Studies, University of South Carolina, USA *
Provocative and wide-ranging, the essays in Bollywood Horrors contribute to the small but growing literature on Indian horror cinema, while interrogating the notion of “horror” itself as both entertainment genre and aesthetic-cultural category. The authors highlight neglected religious and folkloric themes in “cult” films and examine the “cultural horrors” of post-Liberalization India and the global capitalist economy in which it is enmeshed. * Philip Lutgendorf, Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, Emeritus, University of Iowa, USA *
This book persuasively complicates classic distinctions in Film Studies between art-horror and natural-horror by attending to Indian folklore, religious iconography, demonology, myth and ritual. The collection demonstrates Indian horror cinema's generic hybridity, the enduring relevance of classical Rasa aesthetics in understanding its affective range, and the horror genre's function in figuring everyday violence and trauma in India. * Sudhir Mahadevan, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Washington, USA *
This captivating book provides several insightful perspectives on an overlooked topic of Bollywood horror movies. * Religious Studies Review *