‘Betaal’ review: The Netflix series that forgot to put up ‘a scary show’

The problem with Netflix series “Betaal” is it tries being too many things. It tries to be a morality tale about modern-day urbanisation and greed, as well as a slice of ancient lore serving up every stereotype that has ever defined ‘desi’ mumbo jumbo. There is also token mention woven in of superstition-loaded gender bias, Naxal politics, and the Indian Muslim identity.

In all this, the makers seem to have forgotten what we primarily signed up to watch — a scary show.

Sure, there are the hordes of zombies, lots of creepy dark scenes thriving on insufficient lighting and ominous sound engineering, besides the standard gore quotient you would expect from a story of this particular horror sub-genre. But it is all too formulaic in presentation to create the right effect.