Created by Smita Singh and directed by Pankaj Kumar and Surya  Balakrishnan, Khauf (2025) is very clear about its antagonist from the very first frame. It isn’t a ghost or some sinister energy lurking in the corridors somewhere—that comes later. It’s the grim persistence of predatory men to turn even the most mundane moments of your life into their personal peep show, all while you’re simply trying to exist.

Anu has plans to shift out of the hostel with her friend Svetlana (Chum Darang), something that upsets her other hostel mates Nikki (Rashmi Zurail Mann), Rima (Priyanka Setia), and Komal (Riya Shukla). But her bid for freedom is cut short as the series jumps forward six months and stations on Madhu (Monika Panwar) and her own desperate yearning to do the same. Where Anu saw freedom beyond the walls of room 333 (written in the Hindi numeric ३३३, which flipped is ६६६, 666, the devil’s number), Madhu stakes her hopes within them.

Over the course of eight episodes, with roughly six hours of runtime, Khauf introduces three other storylines, all of which collapse into each other towards the end. There’s the strict but caring warden Gracie Dungdung (played by an assured Shalini Vatsa) and her best friend and drinking partner Constable Ilu Mishra (Geetanjali Kulkarni), who is worried about her son troubled Jeeva’s (Satyam Sharma) disappearance. There’s Madhu’s employer and local guardian, Dr. Shohini Verma (Shilpa Shukla), a psychiatrist who tries to unravel the mystery of a possible shared psychosis that has kept Nikki, Rima and Komal confined to the premises of the hostel. Then there’s Rajat Kapoor’s eerie Hakim, another predator pretending to be a saviour.