Khauf Review - Prime Video’s Horror Series Paints a City’s Fear, But Not Her Rage.

by S. Tara Dwivedi

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⚠ SPOILER ALERT: Mild and Obvious Spoilers Ahead!

still from the series Khauf

Horror shows on Indian OTT platforms are a rare biannual treat, and as someone who actively seeks them out, I was eagerly waiting for an empty weekend to binge Khauf. Set in Delhi, a city I’ve lived in most of my life, and one I know to be terrifying in ways few fictional stories truly capture, Khauf picks the correct subject matter to explore through the city. 

Madhu (Monica Panwar), a young woman fleeing trauma from an unreported assault, moves from Gwalior to Delhi for a fresh start with her boyfriend. She ends up in a crumbling women’s hostel, Room 333, where her arrival is met with eerie warnings and growing dread. As paranoia sets in and her trust begins to fray, Madhu suspects the city and its people may be hiding something sinister. 

Khauf works best in its textures: the sound design is sharp, the title sequence is beautifully unsettling, and the hostel itself is a brilliantly chosen set - claustrophobic and unhomely, with flickering lights and chipped walls overpowering the residents attempts to decorate. The ensemble cast of women in the hostel are a highlight, making familiar tropes of women exciting with their performances. An airhostess from the paradise of Kohima, a feisty former sexworker, a pregnant mother afraid of female feticide, a rich anxious English speaking girl and working nurses make for a compelling watch, and their performances of fear are often more convincing than the actual horror. Though visually striking, the slow burn often fizzles, with supernatural moments that sometimes feel ripped from an Aahat reboot with exploding body parts and car crashes that might’ve been scarier left unseen.

Despite its eight episodes of nearly 50 minutes each, Khauf only scratches the surface of the themes it gestures toward. The show flirts with the difficult themes of sexual assault, gendered trauma and urban alienation but rarely commits to exploring them with the complexity they demand. In a city like Delhi, where horror isn’t always supernatural and the sources of terror only seem to find new names and shapes in the newspaper everyday, Khauf had the opportunity to say something real. Horror is uniquely equipped to externalise that fear, to let the trauma haunt back. But after sitting with her for many hours Madhus rage never feels hers to own and the violence Madhu experiences is outsourced to a generic creepy male ghost colonising her body.

Parallel to Madhu’s story, the show follows constable Ilu Mishra (Geetanjali Kulkarni) as she investigates the disappearance of her estranged, criminal son, while grappling with guilt about being a “bad mother.” There's so much latent horror in the fear of raising a monster, in recognising the person you brought into the world as capable of cruelty. Yet this thread, too, is left undercooked. The emotional and thematic potential of maternal estrangement collapses into a muddled police procedural. Horror has long punished mothers, but it’s also offered space to explore their deepest fears. Khauf introduces that possibility but shies away from letting it fully unravel.

still from Khauf

A disproportionate amount of screen time is given to Rajat Kapoor’s black-magic-practising hakim, who delivers some haunting visuals in a Burari-esque Old Delhi house of horrors. Less a malevolent supernatural force and more a serial-killing misogynist, the character ultimately serves as just another vehicle for violence against the female body. His comeuppance, when it finally arrives, is conveniently timed and quite unrewarding.

Delhi’s suffocating winters, blistering summers, endless construction noise, and curious yet indifferent crowds make it a landmine of terror, especially for women. The city exhausts the body, disorients the mind, and often isolates the soul. Khauf seems aware of this, but only partly. In a particularly exploitative and unnecessary mention of the 2012 Nirbhaya case, the show reveals its discomfort with its own themes. It gestures at and shocks with trauma but refuses to sit with it. A horror show haunted by good ideas, Khauf is ultimately too afraid to fully embrace them.