'Betaal' Trailer: A Zombie Curse Is Unleashed In Netflix's Indian Horror Series

If you've been hungry for some fresh zombie-related entertainment, Netflix is here to help satisfy your craving with Betaal, an Indian horror thriller series from Blumhouse Television. Check out the new trailer below, which features a squad of police officers unwittingly releasing a horde of blood-thirsty zombie redcoats.

Betaal Trailer

Blumhouse Television teamed with SK Global Entertainment and Red Chillies Entertainment to bring this horror thriller series to life. It's directed and written by Patrick Graham, co-directed by Nikhil Mahajan, and co-written by Suhani Kanwar. That's the same team that worked on Ghoul, Netflix's first step into the realm of Indian horror. Ghoul involved a terrifying monster drawn from Arabic folklore, and it looks like Graham and his collaborators are once again tapping into ideas of unlocking ancient evil for this series. Ghoul was only three episodes, and IMDb claims Betaal is only four, so this is an example of Netflix showing some restraint and not stretching out a story past its breaking point.

It's no secret that Netflix has been ramping up its international game over the past several years, and this is clearly an attempt to create a buzz-worthy series which aims squarely at one of its biggest as-yet-un-dominated countries while still having enough recognizable genre elements to become a crossover hit and attract fans from all over the world.

Side note: on a purely visual level, the costuming for the zombies is very cool – almost as if the White Walkers and wights from Game of Thrones were zombified while fighting in the Revolutionary War. I dig it.

Indian cinema is a huge blind spot for me, but this trailer has inspired me to try to dive in and explore entertainment from that part of the world. I'm not familiar with these actors (yet), but you may recognize them: Viineet Kumar Singh (MukkabaazBard of Blood), Jitendra Joshi (Sacred Games), Aahana Kumra (Lipstick Under My Burkha), and Suchitra Pillai (Dil Chahta Hai).

Here's the show's official synopsis:

Evil is eternal. From the makers of 'Get Out', 'Insidious', 'Bard of Blood', and 'Ghoul' comes another boundary-pushing and genre-elevating horror series. While on a mission to displace the natives of Campa forest in order to build a highway, Sirohi and his squad unwittingly unleash the curse of Betaal mountain that wreaks havoc on the people and threatens to end civilization as we know it.

Betaal premieres on Netflix on May 24, 2020.