Watch Telugu horror with headphones. The regional ASMR-style dread (crickets, temple bells, whispered folk rhymes) is half the experience.
A 5-minute single-take where the protagonist washes her face, and the mirror reflection slowly smiles differently. 3. Kampanalu (October 2025) – Folk Horror on a Budget Genre: Rural legend / Body horror Where to watch: Prime Video (Telugu with subs)
A team of three YouTubers investigates a haunted zamindar mansion in Kurnool. The first hour is pure mimicry of Gonjiam and Grave Encounters —but the last 30 minutes go completely off the rails. The entity doesn’t just kill; it mimics the team’s voices to call their real family members, and the final shot suggests the footage we watched has been altered by the ghost itself.
It avoids the “urban skeptic vs. rural belief” cliché. Instead, the heroine is a local forest officer who half-believes the myth, making the dread feel earned. 4. Mukha Mukhamuga (August 2025) – AI Horror Genre: Tech-horror / Doppelgänger Where to watch: Disney+ Hotstar
Starring a career-best performance by Nithya Menen, this film flips the haunted-house trope. A middle-aged archivist begins seeing a child’s shadow in her new flat. But the twist: the shadow is her childhood trauma manifesting. The horror is intensely psychological—doors open to wrong rooms, phone calls play her own forgotten screams, and the final act reveals a cycle of family violence that blurs reality.