The alumna of New York Film Academy, Surya has made tender, emotionally rich shorts like Kheer and Arre Baba, co-directing Khauf is a big leap, and she knows it. “I’m very thankful,” she says. “After Kheer, I didn’t make anything for a long time. I made a short last year, but it’s hard. Funding it yourself, getting it into festivals...none of it is easy.”

Surya Balakrishnan never imagined she'd dive into the horror genre. In fact, she didn’t even watch horror. “I don’t watch horror either,” she laughs, “and then somehow, this show just came into my life. And now I’m a sucker for it.” That show, of course, is Khauf, an unsettling, genre-blending series that doesn’t just rely on jump scares, but uses horror to reflect the haunting reality of being a woman in a city like Delhi. The 8-episode series dropped on Amazon Prime last month.

But Khauf came with a unique pull. “The first thing that drew me in was this one-line pitch: Delhi is horror for women. And we’re using horror as a genre to tell that truth.”

That truth plays out in a slow, simmering dread in this phycological horror series. Unlike the typical over-the-top Indian horror with jump scares and dramatic music, Khauf creeps under your skin. “That lingering fear was already in the writing,” she explains. “I’m from Mumbai, where as a woman, you do feel relatively safer. But in Delhi, there’s always this sense that you have to be extra careful. That’s what Smita Singh captured in the script. And so even though there’s an entity in the show, the real horror is the city itself.”

Horror That Reflects Life:

The episodes directed by Surya are very different in tone and structure, but equally layered. Episode 5, she says, was more tightly woven into the main narrative, and allowed her to explore a wide range of emotions: “There’s one of my favorite scenes wherein these two lovers are in the car...when you don’t know if you should trust this guy. And the audience is just as unsure. That grey zone, that psychological tension...it’s so rich.”

Turns out audiences loved it too. Episode 5 currently holds the top IMDb rating of the series. “Oh really? I didn’t know! That’s amazing,” she says, genuinely surprised. But she’s quick to add, “I don’t have a single favorite episode. For me, it worked in parts...like pieces of a larger emotional puzzle.”

Her favorite character? “Geetanjali Kulkarni as Constable Ilu Mishra. She’s tough, has an idiotic son, is grieving, is pulled into all this strangeness… I just love how layered she is.”

The Real Haunting

One of Khauf's strengths is how it uses horror not just for thrills, but to make a point without sounding preachy. “That’s because it came from such a real place,” Surya explains. “Smita lived in a working women’s hostel in Delhi. Some scenes were directly from her experiences, like the bus scene. I thought it was exaggerated. She said, ‘This happened to my sister.’ And when I showed it to my guy friends, they said, ‘This happened to my sister too.’ That’s when I realized, okay, it’s not dramatic. It’s just real.”

The hostel setting, she believes, was a brilliant choice. “There’s ambition, freedom, fear, loneliness… all living together in that space. It created this perfect emotional pressure cooker.”

Throughout the series, there’s a recurring theme: the women only find their strength after something terrible happens. Why is that? “Because that’s what life does,” she says. “You go through something, no matter how big or small, and you change. Your guard goes up. You become more careful, more aware. It’s not just a women’s thing. It’s human.”

That idea comes to life in how the horror in Khauf plays out. Not just supernatural, but also real. “I kept wondering what horror fans would think. Because the entity isn’t that scary. But the fear of the city, of what happens to you...and that stays with you.”

Justice, Revenge, and the Aftermath

Unlike most horror or revenge dramas, Khauf doesn’t stop at revenge. “It goes further,” Surya says. “Even after justice or what looks like justice, there’s trauma. The scars are still there. It doesn’t just end.”

This idea was deeply embedded in both her episodes. “Even in Episode 7, when the girls do what they do… they’re not okay afterward. They’re stuck. They’re suffering. So you wonder, was it worth it? Should they have just let it go? But then again, why should they?”

It’s this moral ambiguity that she thinks makes Khauf unique. “We didn’t want to spell it out. It’s okay if you feel conflicted. That’s the point.”

Co-Directing, Learning, and Unlearning:

Surya came on board late in the process after creators Smita Singh and Pankaj Kumar had already done the groundwork. “But there was complete space for my ideas,” she clarifies. “Of course, it’s a challenge. Long shoots, different people, lots of collaboration, it’s not always easy. But it worked.”

Being from an advertising background also helped. “Coming from the ad world, I’ve an edge with visual economy...how to say a lot in little time. That helped. Though sometimes, it also held me back. I’d think in short bursts, when long format needs you to breathe a little more.”

So what’s next?

Surya recently completed a short film titled Deepa Didi, and a feature documentary called Amarkatha, set around the Amarnath Yatra. The doc, she says, looks at the environmental and political layers of the pilgrimage. “We’ve been shooting it for years. It’s finally ready to begin its festival journey.”

And what about Khauf Part 2? She smiles, “I honestly don’t know. Smita might. Hopefully soon. I’d love to return, of course.”

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