Jamlok: India’s First AI‑Driven Horror Film Takes Shape

There’s a new kind of fright on the horizon – an Indian horror movie that’s being built with the help of artificial intelligence. The project, called Jamlok, is the brainchild of AI‑film studio Koyal AI and the conventional production house Waveband Production.

The duo chose a very public way to pull back the curtain: they displayed the film’s very first poster at the “Uncanny India” festival held at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The event, which is the Indian chapter of Koyal’s global Uncanny Valley Fest, gathered filmmakers, tech‑savvy students, and content creators for a whirlwind of AI‑powered storytelling.

What makes Jamlok stand out is its hybrid approach. While the story and many visual elements will be generated by cutting‑edge generative‑AI tools, the on‑screen action will still feature real actors delivering performances in front of the camera. In a press note the producers said they expect to wrap up the whole shoot in about three months – a timeline that would be hard to match with traditional methods.

The festival itself was a kind of showcase‑marathon. Participants were asked to crank out AI‑driven pieces in a single day, competing in three categories: advertising films, music videos and short films. Nine entries made the cut for the final screening, reflecting a growing interest in AI as a creative partner. The Uncanny Valley Fest isn’t new to this format – it has previously popped up at Y Combinator in San Francisco, at SXSW in Austin, and even at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

So far, the buzz around Jamlok is a mix of curiosity and cautious excitement. If the three‑month deadline holds, we might soon see a horror film that feels both eerily familiar and unsettlingly novel, proof that AI can be more than a gimmick – it can actually help tell the stories that keep us up at night.