I would like to make a point here that it's not a scary film. It's an adventure thriller,' he clarified.

Produced by Varma and Ronnie Screwvala, 'Agyaat' is about a film unit on a shoot in a dense forest and then crew members start getting killed one by one under mysterious circumstances by an invisible creature.

'Hollywood has made thousands of such films about people stuck somewhere and getting killed under unknown reasons. I thought what if this time people don't see what is killing them...the idea was to compel them to use their own imagination as a weapon, which is more lethal,' the filmmaker said.

Releasing Aug 7, 'Agyaat' has an ensemble cast and includes Telugu actor Nitin Reddy.

The promos of the film suggest stark resemblances to Arnold Schwarzenegger-starrer sci-fi action horror 'Predator', which showed a special task force being hunted down by an extra-terrestrial life form in the jungles of Central America.

Asked if inspration for 'Agyaat' came from the 1987 movie, Varma said: 'It's not only from 'Predator' but also from other such films like 'The Blair Witch Project', 'Anaconda', 'Alien' and 'The Thing'. In fact what sets 'Agyaat' apart is that you don't see what's killing you, which makes it even more adventurous.'

Shot mostly in the Sigiriya jungles of Sri Lanka and the Athirapally forests in Kerala, the film's location was crucial for Varma, considering the invisibility of the creature.

'As the basic point was not to show the creature at all, the location had to make up for most of it. And among all the jungles I've been to in my life, Sigiriya is the most scary of them all where the bulk of the film is shot.

'My excitement was also to shoot a jungle, as it has been never done before, which I achieved with the background score, special effects and camera movements,' he explained.

Varma's future projects include 'Rakta Charitra' and a three-dimensional film.