So it’s “Spooktober” and I just renewed Netflix and wanted to see some good things that it can show me and came across this.

Ghouls is a Netflix original horror Miniseries from India. The series is written and directed by Patrick Graham and jointly produced by Jason Blum, Anurag Kashyap, Ryan Turek, Vikramaditya Motwane, Michael Hogan, Kilian Kerwin, John Penotti and Suraj Gohill.

It focuses on the mythical ghoul creature from folklore, set in a dystopian future and has a lot of political propaganda. The main character is Nida Rahim (played by Radhika Apte) is a newly recruited officer in the military that teaches it’s soldiers to be completely loyal to their country and that it represents their only family. This forces her to be in a very difficult situation where she has to hand her father to the authorities because of his radical activities. To commend her for her loyalty she is sent to a covert military detention center where a very dangerous prisoner called Ali Saeed (played by Mahesh Balraj) will be transported in order to be interrogated. However once he arrives things start becoming very weird and the tables seem to have turned.

It is a short show, just three episodes but it is very engaging and manages to fully immerse you in it. I was a bit skeptical since I am not really that much into Indian cinema but this was such an amazing surprise. It started off a bit slow in terms of horror in the first Episode but the plot was very good. The second episode was much more thrilling though. I found myself getting chills throughout the entire episode. The best aspect of the show was definitely the atmosphere. It was so suspenseful and claustrophobic. Yes there was some propaganda, it made India seem like a totalitarian country that demonizes Muslims and intellectuals and at some points during viewing it you can find yourself asking who is worse: the demon or the government, but it is fiction after all and I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Final verdict: 8/10