Laugh the vampires back into the castle, tickle the monsters back underneath the bed. The best horror movies of our time are turning out to be comedies. Stree 2, the year’s biggest hit, is a story of a gang of friends fighting a headless monster who is intent on kidnapping women. Munjya, which also released this year, draws from Indian myth and has as many laughs as it has scares. Romancham, about a bewitched ouija board, was the fifth-highest-grossing Malayalam film of 2023. India now has a horror-comedy franchise (Bhool Bhulaiyaa 1, 2 and the upcoming 3) and hits in Marathi, Telugu and Bengali. And somewhere, the ghost of Goa Goa Gone, the Bollywood zombie comedy that started it all in 2013, is rolling in its grave, laughing.

Hollywood’s done it for ages. Both An American Werewolf in London and Beetlejuice are ’80s gems. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a hit ’90s movie before it became a hit ’90s TV show. It’s played with the genre with such gems as Shaun of the Dead (2004), Jennifer’s Body (2009) and The Cabin in the Woods (2011) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014). It’s not as easy as it looks. Two actors, who’ve delivered on both the fright and the funnies, tell us how they got it right.

Pankaj Tripathi

Horror and humour seem like an odd pairing, but they have more in common than we realise. “They’re both collective, infectious, community-driven emotions,” says the actor from Stree and Stree 2. “If five people laugh in a theatre, most people follow. It’s also how laughter clubs work.”

Another shared trait: Both genres rely on creating a connection with the audience. Indian horror comedies work because they poke fun at superstitions and myths that still persist. Tripathi is from Bihar, where people can tell bhoot (ghost) from pret (wandering soul) and pishach (vampire) from chudail (witch). He was visiting his village, Balsand, last week, when he saw a sack of white cement and thought he might use it to prank his nephews. “But I myself started believing that someone wearing white clothes was seated there, and got goosebumps.”

On camera, injecting humour into a scary situation calls for a different kind of talent. “You don’t spout jokes when you’re scared,” he says. “It makes the comedy seemed forced, which isn’t funny at all. So, actors usually rely on the weird things people do when they’re spooked – a gesture, awkward posture or expression. You just need to keep fear as the central emotion.”

Consider the scene when his character, paranormal researcher Rudra, rides into town in Stree (2018). He stops to give some men three tips on how to escape the female spirit that’s been terrorising men at night. It’s all stupid advice: Walk, don’t run; don’t leave your shoes behind... “But just as I’m about to share the last tip, I get a phone call from an imaginary woman named Shama,” Tripathi says. The men, already spooked, don’t stick around. They scamper away without picking up the last, most valuable hack: Don’t look back.

Adding comedy to horror does it one unexpected (and profitable) favour. It makes space for a joke to recur, and even return in the sequel. In Stree, Shama is the lover who’s referenced but never seen. Lamp flames dramatically go out at every mention of her name. She might not even be real. In Stree 2, she turns out to actually exist. The gag wasn’t just empty foreshadowing. It actually fed the plot.

And, like horror, a big part of comedy is knowing when to stop. There’s one moment in Stree 2, when the guys believe that Jana, a man who’d been possessed by an evil spirit, has died. It was originally written as a funny scene. Tripathi and some of the crew suggested that they play it serious, “or the emotion of the moment would have been diluted”.

Aparshakti Khurana

Khurana, with appearances in Bhediya (2022), Stree and Stree 2, has learnt that in both horror and comedy, timing is everything. “When does one jump from fear, so that it’s also funny? That’s what I had to figure out.”

In the Stree films, in which he plays the hero’s friend, Bittu, he did that by playing off the absurdity of the situation. When Bittu finally sees Stree, and realises she’s not a figment of his lovelorn friend’s imagination, Khurana had to perfect his gaping look of horror and surprise. “My jaw drops because I’m watching her in a fight scene. But also because I am terrified of her. I don’t see the humour in the situation, but the audience needs to,” he says.

There’s a fine line between cringe and cool, he says. So, some comedy cliches must stay dead and buried. “Lisping, stammering, mocking a disorder – none of it is funny,” says Khurana. Neither is the desperate-spinster trope. “A woman in a white sari, walking alone on a road... It automatically used to mean she was a lonely spirit, preying on men. No one is buying it anymore, and it’s giving white clothes a bad name,” he says.

Instead, Bollywood’s newfound love of horror-comedy offers an opportunity to explore ideas that slick thrillers can’t, he says. It can let us laugh at the things we’re too scared to talk about. It can defuse our fears of the unknown. “In some movies, people make fun of their own ideologies,” he says. “That’s the best use of the genre.”

And it can critique, safely, how we’ve changed. In Stree 2, at the point when everyone spots the monster for the first time, the setting matters as much as the action. Stree uses her braid to battle him. “The four guys, meanwhile, hide, watching the fight from a bangle shop,” he says. “It’s a subtle statement on what it now means to be a man or a woman. And because you’re laughing, you’ve given in to the idea too.”

Snickers and scares: The Brunch team picks their favourite horror comedies

Zombivli (2022).Mumbai is chaotic as it is. Add zombies to the mix and it becomes a nightmare. When a zombie outbreak occurs in Dombivli, a middle-class couple teams up with locals to survive. The Marathi film is funny, self-aware, and self-deprecating, making you forget that they’re in a life-or-death situation. CF

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019). Artists are worth more when they’re dead, right? So, when paintings by an unknown genius are discovered, everyone wants in – Jake Gyllenhal, the critic; Rene Russo, the gallerist; Toni Collette, the curator. A mysterious force kills them off one by one. To escape death, one must avoid art. As if that’s possible. RL

Bhediya (2022). For those who are super-scared of horror movies, Bhediya, starring Varun Dhawan, delivers on the laughs. It also sends a strong message about monster-making, it ties into the Stree universe, and was shot in and featured actors from the North East. Truly, the most horrifying thing was Kriti Sanon’s wig. UM

Santa Clarita Diet (2017-2019). What happens when one half of a real-estate couple turns into a zombie? The family comes together to hide the horror and stock the freezer with tasty corpses. Drew Barrymore manages to look adorable even when she’s feasting on a bloody limb. KK

Deadstream (2022). As in, the opposite of livestream. It follows a disgraced Insta content creator who spends a night alone in a haunted house to win back followers. The effects are top-notch. You laugh way more than you thought you would. Great scares and laughs, pulled off on a small budget. UM

Go Goa Gone (2013). The one that started it all. A Goa rave, where people turn into flesh-eating zombies. They slow down if you throw cocaine at them. The best part? Saif Ali Khan posing as a Russian gangster, giving in to his Dilli-ness when things really go south. KK

Death Becomes Her (1992). Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as two fading-but-still-vain actors, competing in both life and in death. Bruce Willis as the mortician who married them both. A potion of eternal youth. A fall down the stairs. A gunshot through the torso. So ridiculous it’s immortal. RL

Secrets in the Hot Spring (2018). Three young men, visiting a hot-springs hotel to oversee its operations, realise, belatedly, that it’s not a cosy getaway. Ghosts pop up in the corridors and supernatural entities lurk round every corner. Will they figure out the secret of the hotel, or die trying? CF

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