Khauf & The Everyday Terror Of Being A Woman

What Khauf Understands About Being A Woman That Most Horror Doesn't

Khauf champions a kind of fear that is often internal. A deep, insidious fear we learn to swallow and live with, as women in a male-dominated society, writes

Swetha Ramakrishnan.

IN AMAZON PRIME VIDEO'S HORROR SERIES Khauf (possibly one of the best shows of 2025 so far, in terms of how culturally rich and thematic the storytelling is), there’s a telling scene that presents a very real horror. It has no ghosts, no gore, no monsters or jump scares. It’s actually a small conversation between two characters, followed by an exposition-filled plot point that serves to take the story forward. But to me, it was the scariest bit of the entire series because of what it represents to a woman who grew up in Delhi.

Svetlana (Chum Durung) is standing at the gate of a working women’s hostel, unable to take a step outside. She wants to overcome her trauma of the “outside”, but she’s frozen, right at the precipice. Hakim (a terrifying Rajat Kapoor) stands outside the gate and talks to her about walking outside. “It’s just a gate, you just have to take a few steps and you’re free.” He wants to help her overpower whatever supernatural entity is curtailing her (or so he claims), but Svetlana is petrified. You see, the last time she ventured outside, too much went wrong. And now, an invisible force surrounds her and does not let her leave the premises. She tries, after much back-and-forth by Hakim, but as soon as she takes a few steps ahead of the gate, she feels a tightening around her neck, and she can’t breathe. So she runs back inside.

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The scene is framed with classic horror tropes and language. Dark lighting, creepy background score, fear dripping from every corner. I watched that scene while holding my breath, not from suspense, but from recognition. Svetlana’s paralysis at the gate and subsequent body horror mirror a fear I’ve known my whole life. Growing up in Delhi, women are very aware that the “outside” could turn against them in an instant. Is this lane too dark and creepy? Should I cross this road? Is he walking too close?

I remember one evening when I was in college, walking back from the metro station just a little later than usual. It wasn’t very late, maybe 8:30 pm, but the street was quieter than I liked, and a group of men stood smoking near a corner shop. I slowed my steps, calculated whether taking a longer route through a better-lit road might be wiser, and weighed whether pulling out my phone would make me seem more alert or more vulnerable. These weren’t conscious thoughts; they were instinctual. The kind of mental math you do so often, you stop noticing you’re doing it. At that moment, nothing happened. They looked. I walked faster. I got home. But the relief I felt locking the door behind me was disproportionate to the risk I had technically faced. It’s a cruel ambiguity; like Svetlana, you’re never quite sure whether the threat is real or imagined. All you know is that your body believes it’s real.

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Khauf explores the horrors that women face in navigating life around patriarchy, trauma and misogyny. It tells us the story of five women and the psychological breakdown of living in a city like Delhi. On seeing the trailer, I went into Khauf expecting supernatural entities and jump scares. As someone who’s consumed a steady diet of horror films, I thought I was prepared. But what unsettled me most wasn’t the supernatural; it was the way the show portrayed Delhi and the men that inhabit the city. For women like me who grew up in this city, the fear isn’t confined to the screen. It follows us home.

Whether it’s Madhu (Monica Panwar) or the other women in Khauf (from the girls who can’t step out, to the warden or even the psychiatrist helping Madhu later in the series), their first instinct in the face of fear is to gaslight themselves. The men in Madhu’s life are constantly telling her she’s absolutely fine and needs to move on and get married. The warden believes the women have imposed a ban on themselves, but if they really wanted to leave the hostel, they would. One of the women who is stuck there is pregnant, and her in-laws are convinced she’s faking it to escape her duties as a bahu . Delhi and its men become the lurking antagonist, gaslighting its characters into submission. We keep wondering if they’re imagining things. Is the threat tangible, or is it trauma playing tricks on their mind? That disorienting uncertainty is something I’ve known far too well.

I once had a neighbour who lingered too long at his window every time I left the house. At first, I brushed it off. Maybe he was just bored, maybe I was being paranoid. But then the glances turned into stares, the stares into smiles, the smiles into unsolicited conversations I hadn’t invited. I started timing my exits differently. I felt ridiculous — ashamed, even — for adjusting my routine over something so “small.” When I brought it up to a friend, she shrugged: “ It’s Delhi, yaar . He’s just looking. Don’t make it a thing. ”

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But that’s the thing. You’re constantly told not to make a big deal out of “nothing”, even when your gut is twisting, even when your skin prickles with a kind of knowing. Like the characters in Khauf , you begin to internalise the doubt. You question your reactions. You start to wonder if the horror is in your head. Until one day, you learn the hard way that it wasn’t. And by then, no one’s around to say you were right to be afraid.

Khauf taps into the internalised fear women learn to normalise. The horror of being disbelieved, of being told we’re imagining things, runs through the show like an undercurrent. I caught myself saying (out loud) many times: “Madhu is just traumatised. She should just move out of Delhi, and things will get better.” But there is a psychological toll to this kind of trauma. The ability to be constantly vigilant, not for fun but for survival, almost rewires your brain. What Khauf gets right in its quietest, most unsettling moments is that being scared becomes second nature. Fear becomes muscle memory.

All the female actors performed that fear, the trauma, the gaslighting and the internal battles with so much emotional precision, I found myself cheering out loud at the climax when they decided to take matters into their own hands, morals be damned. Props to the director and creator of the series, Smita Singh, whose female gaze adds a nuanced layer to the horror of Khauf . It’s a show that gave as much importance to internal fear, slow dread, psychological unravelling (best seen in Madhu’s character) as it did to creepy villains and disgusting men who don’t understand consent.

Khauf champions a kind of fear that is often internal. A deep, insidious fear we learn to swallow and live with, as women in a male-dominated society. Watching the show made me feel seen in a way no other piece of fiction has in recent memory. It validated the coping mechanisms we apply to be able to rise above the everyday horrors of being a woman. And it’s why stories like Khauf are so important, because they scare us into realisation.

Khauf is currently streaming on Prime Video.

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