It’s been a long running gag now, fuelled by numerous examples it has to be said, that black characters in horror films are the first to die. So much so that they even made a film about it, with the recently released The Blackening.

It could be said that other minorities would love to be the first killed off, so absent as they are from the horror genre as it is.

Attempting to put that particular wrong to right is Indian born director Bishal Dutta, with his debut film that not only features a predominantly Indian cast, but also a story that leans into Indian folklore too.

It can be hard enough growing up as a teenager as it is, without the extra burden of being somewhat different. Samidha (Megan Suri) is an Indian American, whose parents moved to Canada, where she was born, for a better life for them all.

But as a teenager in a high school, Samidha, who goes by the name Sam, just wants to blend in. This proves to cause some tension at home, especially with her mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa), who insists on continuing to speak in her mother tongue, as she sees her daughter distancing herself from her roots every day.

Her integration with the other Canadian students has also seen herself distance herself from her best friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who wasn’t as quick to adapt, and is now seen as a bit of a loner.

Things come to a head between them when Sam is confronted by a clearly frightened Tamira, who is holding a jar with strange writing on it. Within it holds something that quickly reconnects her with her Indian culture, but one she would rather not come face to face with.

So here it is, a horror film that not only features Indian characters at the heart of it, but also culture. And as original as that may be, it’s disappointing that Dutta, who also co-wrote the script, supports the rest of the film in a disappointingly generic fashion.

Although the evil figure, a Pishach, comes from Indian folklore, it struggles to create an identity of its own, instead falling into a bog standard blur of evil. And despite the intriguing back story, it just isn’t that frightening, something that’s reflecting in the embarrassingly low body count in the film.

Where it shines is in promoting the idea of identity, particularly transitioning from one to another, in order to fit in. And young actress Megan Suri, who had a running role in Mindy Kaling’s Netflix show Never Have I ever, does well as the female protagonist in peril, only restricted by the story itself.

But a film of this kind lives or dies by the presence of its antagonist, and with one as it is here that is rarely seen, and when it does reveal itself, looks nothing more than a man in a silly suit – which is invariably the case in real life – it doesn’t do itself any favours.

On the one hand it’s nice to see a section of the community other than the usual white middle-class teens and their families suffer on screen, but it really should be out of fear and not embarrassment, as they face a muppet of a movie monster.

Maybe it was budget constraints, or simply a lack of vision, but the film suffers from having its feet in two different camps, one in culture, and the other in the conventional, with the result being that it’s extremely heavy-footed in favour of the later.