If a woman combs her hair at night, it's sure to attract spirits. This superstition is a continuous trope in this 'horror' film and is used to take the story ahead. What about men you ask? Well, men can comb themselves to baldness, and no ghost will ever come knocking. Such hokum is served continuously throughout the horror fest that this film is.

Kamal Amrohi's Mahal was one of the earliest Hindi films presented in horror style. The horror genre made its mark in Bollywood with low budget films produced by the Ramsay Brothers. The Ramsay movies focused on masked monsters, old mansions, sex and haunting songs sung by wandering spirits.

Do not brush your hair at night. These are the foreboding words that are supposed to send a chill down your spine. As Sachiin Joshi says these words to a skeptical Nargis Fakhri, you wonder what part that hairbrush will play in this two-hour film. Joshi (who also produces) plays richie rich Karan Ajmera, who brings his girlfriend Ahaana (Fakhri) to his family's neglected summerhouse on her insistence. None of the family has been to that cobwebbed house for eight years during which only a lone caretaker has been poking around its haunted interiors.

The immovable tropes of the horror genre in Bollywood, move! Well, somewhat. For a very long time I watched Amavas with growing apprehension that it won't move beyond the known terror tactics. You know, the creaky doors, clanging bells, corpses banging from down under, women in negligible negligees running for their lives.