Baramulla review: A horror-thriller that unravels the duality of both the Kashmir valley and the film itself!

Produced and written by Aditya Dhar, and directed by Aditya Suhas Jamble, Baramulla is the year’s most unexpected surprise, a film that fascinates for what it achieves, and frustrates for what it falls short of being!

Horror as a genre has rarely been explored in Indian cinema, and the hunger for it is stronger than ever. While the MHCU scratches a certain itch, what I’m talking about is something deeper. The kind of horror the West seems drawn to these days is the idea that the real horrors of our world, the ones we live in, are far scarier than ghosts that scream in the dark. The genre has always boasted of this possibility to explore and go beyond jump scares and gore. As it is a well-known fact that characters don’t realize they’re in a horror story, which gives space to explore our buried emotions, things we never speak about. The first time I saw this done was in The Haunting of the Hill House, where the ghosts coincided with grief, trauma, and everything we ran away from. Recently, Khauftouched on something similar, and now Baramulla takes it further using horror to dig into the buried screaming silences of Kashmir valley that need to be heard.

The film follows DSP Ridwaan Shafi Sayyed (Manav Kaul), called to investigate the case of Shoaib, the minister's son, who disappeared during a public magic show. Sayyed isn’t the heroic cop archetype here to restore order; he’s a man haunted by his own past, his traumas bleeding into the case. His wife Gulnaar (Basha Sumbli), daughter Noorie (Arista Mehta), and son Ayaan (Singh Rohaan) are equally burdened by ghosts of their own. When the family moves to Kashmir for the investigation, the line between thriller and horror begins to blur until it’s impossible to tell whether the real danger lies outside or within.

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Horror always lands hardest when it’s personal. And what’s more terrifying than loneliness, especially a child’s loneliness, which they can’t name or understand? Baramullauses this fear beautifully. When someone finally seems to understand you, you trust them completely. That’s where the film draws its sharpest metaphor. What is a familiar warning we’ve all heard like don’t talk to strangers, don't go out alone becomes a chilling commentary on how children in Kashmir are sometimes lured into militancy, their innocence weaponized through manipulation and faith.

A mysterious man and a white rose appear before those already drowning in their inner darkness. They seem like signs of comfort, a helping hand to the lost but become the mask of radicalization. Like most real terrors, they hide behind beauty. Similarly, the film treats its ghosts not as external entities but as extensions of inner trauma. Ayaan’s ghostly friend fills a void of loneliness, Noorie’s sensing a dog recalls her fear and allergies while Gulnaar hears the sound of jewellery and a woman humming. All shadowing echoes of something buried deep, as if horror here isn’t about what’s hiding in the dark, but about what happens when the dark comes from within.

It’s a strikingly bold idea to use the horror-thriller form to explore the political and emotional fault lines of Kashmir. The land has seen enough blood and blind faith to make the metaphor almost too real. The haunted house becomes the haunted valley. The children possessed by ghosts become children possessed by ideology. It’s a clever parallel, and for much of the film, it works. But somewhere in the second half,the film shifts course. What begins as a broader reflection on blind faith and manipulation narrows into a narrative of justice for the Kashmiri Pandits. As a thriller, this turn remains gripping since the investigation is well-paced, and the eventual reveal of “bhaijaan” is truly unsettling. But as a piece of horror commentary, it falters because the emotional dread of losing a child’s innocence into an ideology that once felt universal begins to carry political weight, as one religion beomes a magnamous savior while another is questioned for its patriotism.

Still, there’s no denying that the film is crafted with stunning control. The cinematography captures the valley’s snow covered serenity with eerie precision while the resounding sound design and match-cut editing build an atmosphere that seeps under your skin, almost verbalising beauty that feels dangerous, something that mirrors Kashmir itself. Then the film becomes almost worrisome as it’s so convincing that its conviction scares you more than the ghosts!

It’s almost poetic that Baramulla arrived on Netflix around the same time as Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a story that also asks about what makes us monstrous! Though in that, it’s about human ambition unchecked by empathy, here it’s the ability to destroy innocence and steal purity in the name of belief and call it purpose. But like much of Aditya Dhar’s work, I find myself torn. His films are always ambitious, visually stunning, and emotionally sharp but they also carry politics I can’t fully align with. Baramullais no exception. It’s beautifully crafted and full of meaning, yet it blurs the line between horror and politics so close that it makes me uneasy as when horror gets mixed with vengence, its ache for a closure can be as dangerous as the monsters it tries to expose.

Baramulla is currently streaming on Netflix!

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