Bulbbul

In nineteenth-century Bengal a small girl is married to a zamindar much older than herself and brought to the manor. Years later, when the brother-in-law who left the house returns, everything has changed: she is now the lady of the house and men in the area are dying in strange ways. The villagers put it down to a witch living in the trees. Anvita Dutt uses the form of a fairy tale and turns the local ghost story into the counterpart of violence against women, so the horror element here is not threat but reckoning. The red night scenes and the use of colour are its visual signature. Tripti Dimri leads. It went out on Netflix and established a line continued in the director's later films. Who it is for: viewers who like gothic tales and the new wave of Indian horror. Who it is not for: anyone who must avoid sexual violence and scenes of beating.