“Ghost Stories” is a new Netflix anthology of four horror films made by some of Bollywood’s leading filmmakers. To those unaware that Indian cinema has long surpassed the clichés of MGM-style musicals and Technicolor kitsch, this movie introduces the talents — and the shortcomings — of the current tastemakers of Hindi film.

Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar direct vastly different shorts about contemporary Indian characters pushed to various stages of madness. There are terrifying in-laws, unexplained sounds in the hallway, violent miscarriages, gruesome revelations and one particularly frightening mob of village cannibals. Bollywood’s usual focus on romance and family melodrama hasn’t allowed for a thriving horror genre, but with this anthology, each of these filmmakers tries their hand at local screams and moody creeps. The films are at their most unsettling when they draw their supernatural fears from India’s lived reality — mob violence, intergenerational conflicts and women’s suffering.

In promotional interviews for “Ghost Stories,” all four directors have discussed the artistic freedom of creating content for the global streaming giant, freed from the country’s cutthroat theatrical business model and the censors at the Central Board of Film Certification. For audiences, however, the results are a mixed bag.

Kashyap transforms the trauma of a miscarriage into a stylized psychological thriller in which a jealous nephew uses his malicious supernatural powers to inflict pain on his pregnant aunt. Akhtar, whose masterful film “Gully Boy” was India’s official Oscar submission for international feature this season, tells the story of a young nurse caring for a senile woman who may not be as ill as she seems. With exquisite production values — dramatic apartments and severe color palettes — these two segments showcase the technical prowess of contemporary Indian cinema and the acting talents of a new wave of performers.