Laughter in the shadows: Deepanjana Pal on horror, Stree 2 and Megan Thee Stallion
First came the frightened women, then the law-abiding victims on a quest for justice. See how women in horror have come of age. In this week’s Dee for Drama.
During the song Khoobsurat from Stree 2 (2024), one thought kept ricocheting in my head: Shraddha Kapoor’s smile wasn’t nearly creepy enough. As she shimmied alongside Varun Dhawan and Rajkummar Rao, she tossed a Mona Lisa smile to the camera.
It was probably supposed to be enticing and menacing. After all, her character was the one that got the witchy hair extensions at the end of Stree (2018). Yet nothing about Kapoor felt uncanny as she cheerfully cavorted with her co-stars.
In striking contrast is Megan Thee Stallion in the music video for her viral hit Mamushi, featuring Yuki Chiba. Directed by Kevin “Onda” Leyva, the video draws on classic horror imagery and includes a tip of the hat to The Tunnel, a ghost story from Akira Kurosawa’s anthology film, Dreams (1990).
Megan is seen going from sultry to monstrous in the blink of an eye, transforming from a brazenly sensual woman to a massive, vicious snake. In her serpentine form, she is violent. As a woman, there is an edge of danger to her every provocative move. Her victims are gangsters who become blue-faced zombies (like the soldiers in The Tunnel), perhaps doomed to eternally follow Megan’s commands after having looked down on her and lusted after her while alive.
Mamushi (the song gets its name from a species of pit viper) belongs to a more modern sub-genre of horror that spotlights fearless women who relish being able to reduce men to victims as punishment for their objectifying gaze. The video ends with Chiba waking the client who had booked time with Megan, implying that the massacre in the video was a dream.
The final shot is of Megan’s near-naked back, with its tattoo of entangled snakes, as she walks away after tossing an enigmatic glance backwards. Her eerie half-smile leaves the viewer wondering if the violence really was imaginary; and if it was, doesn’t it say volumes about how women are seen by insecure men?
The gold standard for the creepy smile in Hindi cinema is Vyjayanthimala’s in Madhumati (1958). Director Bimal Roy keeps it simple in this scene. There is no cackling laughter, uplighting or overwhelming background score; just an increasingly perplexed Dilip Kumar and a silent, smiling Vyjayanthimala. It’s enough to cause goosebumps.
The “monstrous feminine” has been an integral part of Indian culture long before Barbara Creed coined the phrase, to describe women in horror films who overturn the standard power dynamic and mutate from victim to monster. Indian folklore is filled with stories of wronged women who seek vengeance.
But until films such as Stree, Pari (2018), Bulbbul (2020) and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (2022), most horror movies told audiences that the constraints placed on women by patriarchy were for their own good. When women flouted these norms, they became abject prey, they suffered; some then became predators. And for peace to be restored, a hero had to man up.
Vyjayanthimala’s Madhu is an iconic woman of Indian horror and, unlike most of her tribe, is also a paragon of law-abiding behaviour. As a ghost, she does not wreak violent vengeance, choosing instead to interrogate the man she holds responsible for her death, until he coughs up a confession. Similarly, Manjeet from Bhoot (2003), who possessed Swati (Urmila Matondkar), helps the police do their job, after taking the law into her own hands in a desperate attempt to alert everyone to the injustices she has suffered.
Even for better-written characters like these two, though, the defining trait of femininity in a horror film used to be weakness. Madhu simply wasn’t strong enough to resist her aggressor, and Swati’s self was practically erased when she is possessed by Manjeet.
Globally, powerful femininity has typically been demonised and punished with gratuitous violence in the genre of horror. It took a feminist clapback for horror films to wake up to the 21st century and serve us powerful women who weren’t punished for taking control of their narratives.
Characters like Madhu and Manjeet smiled so that Bulbbul and Anjulika (from Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2) could torture their tormentors in gruesome, graphic ways.
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
