The reviews are in, and Netflix‘s new Indian horror offering Typewriter should be at the top of your must-watch list this weekend. The Sujoy Ghosh-directed series has already drawn comparisons to Stranger Things and garnered plenty of reports from viewers of lingering fear and paranoia as well as a loss of sleep, and now the critics are weighing in with their consensus.
Set in Goa, India, the series follows a group of three young friends on a mission to capture the ghosts that plagues the notorious home in their neighborhood, though their quest grows more complicated when a new family and their daughter move into the home. Attempting to balance school work and chores, they must try to capture the evil spirit before it is too late.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Although the five-part first season, which premiered on the streaming giant Friday, July 19, does not yet have a rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a number of critics are adding their voice to the growing number of viewers praising Typewriter online.
“Typewriter made us legitimately jump a couple of times, always a good sign for a horror series. But the characters are also well drawn and the fact that it doesn’t take itself seriously makes it even better,” Decider‘s Joel Keller wrote, adding that Ghosh creates “a foreboding mode” and also does “good job at building a lighthearted tone.”
Rohan Naahar of the Hindustin Times praised the series for being what “most studios would kill for,” writing that although it is advertised as a horror series, it is something that could appeal to people of all ages.
“As niche as it may seem at first glance – it is a Goa-set ghost story, after all – Typewriter has a rare cross-generational appeal that most studios would kill for,” he wrote. “Typewriter isn’t quite the horror series that has been advertised in the trailers. It is, instead, a throwback to the stories that Ghosh no doubt grew up on, about intrepid Bengali sleuths, and brave children who take it upon themselves to cure the world of arrogant adults.”
It has not been all good news for Typewriter, though. Writing for Gadgets360, Akhil Arora stated that the series is a “substandard horror fare” that “attempts to laugh at The Conjuring without realising its own failure to scare the viewer, let alone do something more.”
Season 1 of Typewriter, starring Purab Kohli, Palomi Ghosh, and Sameer Kochhar, is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
