What it had to solve
Actor Tia Bajpai, returning to the horror persona that earned her the 'Horror Queen' tag, and musician Arian Romal wanted a video that unsettles like a film rather than accompanies a song — accepting that pure fear would create platform problems.
The idea
Treat a music video as a horror short film — eerie soundscapes and a dark narrative built for dread — then market the fear with warnings to keep the lights on.
How it works
The team built the video as a dark, cinematic narrative with haunting melodies set against disturbing visuals, then marketed the intensity itself: warnings asking audiences not to watch it alone and to 'keep the lights on'.
What it did
The full video crossed almost 10 million views on Instagram; on YouTube it received an 18+ age gate the makers say is rarely applied to a music video, restricting discovery to logged-in adults who search for the song specifically.
Background
'FANAA', a music video by actor Tia Bajpai and Arian Romal, was crafted to push the format into full horror — billed as India's first horror-centric music video, built to leave a lingering sense of dread after the final notes. Bajpai, returning to the 'Horror Queen' persona, plays the centre of a dark narrative that unfolds more like a horror short film than a conventional music video, while Romal's score sets haunting melodies against disturbing visuals.
The commitment to fear brought an unforeseen consequence: YouTube placed an official 18+ age gate on the video. The makers describe the trade-off plainly: "We wanted to make the scariest music video, and we did. Now we are seeing the downside of it. Since the video is not being shown to users, the only way people can watch it is if they are logged in, over 18 and specifically searching for the song. It's kind of cool, but also bad in the same way." They add they were told the video was too scary for viewers.
The restriction became a talking point in its own right — a classification the makers note is rarely seen for a music video, and an unintended measure of how far the visual experience goes. Despite the gate on YouTube, the full video found its audience on Instagram, crossing almost 10 million views, while the team leaned further into the horror with warnings not to watch alone and to keep the lights on.
Bajpai says the shoot required her to fully immerse in the character's world, with genuinely intense moments on set, and argues audiences will connect because beneath the horror and suspense there is a strong emotional layer to the story.
Why it lands
It treats the music video as a genre experiment — horror-film craft in a format that usually plays it safe.
The platform restriction functions as both a distribution problem and a quality claim, and the makers leaned into the second reading.
The cross-platform outcome shows where the audience actually is when one platform's content system throttles a release.
What you can take
Push a format past its genre ceiling and the platform's own content system becomes your review score: the 18+ gate that throttled YouTube discovery is also the credential the audience retells.
Since then
As of the 8 October 2026 report, the video remains age-gated on YouTube while the full version continues to accumulate views on Instagram, where it passed almost 10 million views.
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