Jun 15, 2026 10:00pm IST
Vikram Bhatt Decodes The Success Of ‘Haunted 3D – Echoes Of The Past’: ‘Beneath the horror, it is a love story’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Vikram Bhatt, who has embraced horror on screen, recently faced a real-life scare when he was incarcerated in connection with a financial allegation. His output as a writer, director and producer has mostly been centered on the horror genre, in which he has seen some spectacular success sporadically. Currently, the horror genre is in full bloom, with the success of "Obsession," "Backrooms" and Vikram Bhatt’s own "Haunted 3-D: Echoes Of The Past," which has beaten all the other releases this Friday. The success comes as a relief to the beleaguered filmmaker after the tremendous legal pressures. Bhatt talks about the new turn in his life.
Your film is showing far better collections than the other high-profile releases this week. How does that make you feel?
The only thing that matters to me is whether a film survives. Whether people remember it. Whether they revisit it years later. Whether it finds a place in popular culture. For me, durability is acceptability. If a film is still being watched, discussed and loved 10 or 20 years after its release, it has passed the only test that truly matters. The audience is always the final judge, and they take their time delivering the verdict.
To what do you attribute the success of ‘Haunted: Echoes Of The Past’?
I think the answer is simpler than people imagine. Beneath the horror, it is a love story. Horror may attract audiences initially, but emotion is what stays with them. I think audiences have responded to the emotional core of the film. Word-of-mouth seems to suggest exactly that.
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Your success comes after a year of setbacks. Have you managed to move on?
Life has taught me that carrying resentment is like carrying a heavy suitcase on a long journey. The person who suffers is usually you. What happened, happened. I have certainly not forgotten the lessons, but I have no desire to spend my future reliving my past. Forgiveness is not about saying that what happened was right. It isn't about pretending that there was no wrongdoing. Forgiveness is simply refusing to allow someone else's actions to occupy permanent space in your heart and mind. So yes, I have moved on. Not because they deserved forgiveness, but because I deserved peace.
Horror seems to have become everyone’s favorite genre right now…
I've always felt that horror is one of the most misunderstood genres. Good horror is never really about ghosts. It is about fear, guilt, loss, longing, love, regret and sometimes faith. Horror allows you to explore emotions in their most heightened form. Perhaps that is why I keep returning to it. The supernatural is often just a vehicle to talk about very human things.
In an interview, you said your spirits abandoned you when you went to jail. Please explain?
What I meant was not literal spirits. I was referring to my creative spirit, my confidence and my sense of certainty. When you are suddenly removed from your life, your family, your work and everything familiar, you go through a period where you question everything. There were days when I felt abandoned by the very things that had sustained me all my life. But perhaps that is also part of the journey. Sometimes you have to lose faith in yourself before you find a deeper faith in something larger than yourself.
What are you working on now?
At the moment, I honestly don't know. The truth is that for a long time, I wasn't even sure there would be a next chapter. I was so consumed with surviving the present that I never really spent much time thinking about the future. For now, I'm simply grateful to be here. The rest, I'll figure out as I go along.
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