Dahaan: The Evil Within is an Odia-language supernatural horror movie from Odisha, and it goes straight for the old-fashioned haunted-house and possession territory – an inherited mansion, a locked box, an ancient evil and a family discovering that opening one particular door was a spectacularly bad idea.
The film centres on Manyata Singh Deo, played by Aurosikha Mishra, who opens a mysterious box kept inside the family’s old property and unleashes a malicious spirit, where her sister Anindita, brother Samarendra and cousin Vikram are left dealing with what happens next, eventually bringing in Father Thomas, played by Partha Sarathi Ray, as the possession becomes impossible to ignore.
Dahaan was released in Indian cinemas on September 11, 2026.
This Horror Film Took More Than a Decade to Get Here
Dahaan wasn’t knocked together because somebody suddenly decided Odisha needed a possession movie, as Patnaik has been talking about his love of horror for years, and his own career in the genre goes back to Horror Zone, the fictional horror television series he produced and directed for Tarang TV in 2013, before he subsequently produced Panic Shorts, described as Odisha’s first horror web series, before moving into feature filmmaking.
The director has described Dahaan as a dream he had been carrying for more than a decade, where it was originally scheduled for release in 2023 but was delayed by the pandemic and other production commitments, before eventually reaching cinemas this month.
It also follows a pretty varied run of work – Patnaik directed Pratikshya, based on a short story by Gourahari Das, and has produced or directed projects including Tulasi Apa, Karma, Gangs of Puri and the 2026 fantasy-horror Mantra Muugdha.
Patnaik isn’t hiding his influences either here, because the official material describes Dahaan as a tribute to the horror films he grew up watching, and viewers have already picked up references and nods to older horror cinema throughout the movie – one Letterboxd review specifically described the opening as a love letter to filmmakers and films including Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead.
The official production site also says the filmmakers deliberately favoured horror sequences, atmosphere and prosthetics over VFX, which is another clue about what Patnaik was trying to make.
And there is one production story that has already become part of the movie’s mythology – the official site says Mishra reportedly became “possessed” while filming the climax, the shoot was stopped and footage connected to the incident was incorporated into the finished film.
IMDb’s trivia section carries the same basic claim – pinch of salt time, of course – and from reading various reviews myself regarding the film, the general pattern seems to be that the movie’s biggest strength is its second half rather than its setup.
The Box Office Has Given It a Second Week
The early numbers are small in absolute terms, but Dahaan has continued into a second week rather than disappearing immediately, and one trade tracker puts the film’s first-week net collection at around ₹0.66 crore, with its September 18 live estimate taking the cumulative total to approximately ₹0.69 crore net in India – these are tracker estimates rather than an official producer figure, so they should be treated accordingly.
The strongest market is Odisha by a considerable distance, as of September 18, the tracker recorded 69 shows across 28 Odisha screens, compared with only a handful of shows in Karnataka and Telangana, which isn’t surprising for an Odia-language release, but it does show the challenge facing regional films when they try to expand nationally without the distribution footprint of Hindi, Tamil or Telugu cinema.
And Yes, There Is a Dahaan 2 Tease as well – as according to a viewer review on Letterboxd, the post-credit material announces “Dahaan 2: Evil Will Return”.
Check out some more Indian horror movies.
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