GHOST PROTOCOL

With Night Shift Studios, producer Chakravarthy Ramachandra proves there's serious money in making audiences scream

- VISHAL MENON

It isn't off-brand for Chakravarthy Ramachandra to say he grew up watching Hindi movies made by the Ramsay Brothers, alongside a healthier diet of classic Hollywood horror. He recalls several Sunday afternoons spent with cousins and friends, when he would pop open the lid of his imported video cassette recorder (VCR) and slide in tapes of The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, The Omen, The Shining, Bees Saal Baad, Woh Kaun Thi?, Kohraa, Gumnaam, Purana Mandir, Veerana, Purani Haveli, Raat... The windows had to be kept open because of how terrified they would get. Thirty years later, the same boy has launched a studio exclusively devoted to his undying love for the genre.

Grave Business

Night Shift Studios, based out of Chennai, is Ramachandra's production company, one that has delivered two consecutive horror blockbusters in Malayalam — Bramayugam and Dies Irae. What Blumhouse, Shudder and Hammer are to Hollywood is what he aims for Night Shift to be to Indian cinema. But before he set his eyes on horror, he worked — and still works — as chief executive officer of YNOT Studios, the acclaimed production house behind Tamil hits such as Vikram Vedha, Irudhi Suttru, Mandela, and Game Over.

His work at YNOT is what he now calls his “day shift,” the part of his cinema brain that explores all other genres. Night Shift, however, was created to push the envelope and go where most producers rarely dare.