Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3

Keeping with the theme of the franchise, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 also pits an unassuming cheeky protagonist against a spooky haveli with a buried past. The century-old mansion needs to be restored to its former glory and sold, but Manjulika’s terrorising presence in it forbids the owners from doing so. The royal family in dire need of resources, seeks Rooh baba’s intervention. The fraudster takes up the lucrative offer only to find himself tangled in a mess as he discovers two dark forces who claim to be Manjulika.

Some movies are so entertaining that they make you miss the good old days. But others are so vapid that they make you miss good days. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 is “others”. You see Vidya Balan, and fondly reminisce about Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) and Pritam’s hit soundtrack. You see Vidya Balan and Madhuri Dixit playing enigmatic women, and think of how well they were cast in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya (2010) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014). You see a tragic female ghost haunt a mansion and morph into a human social message in a setting full of foolish men, and it’s hard not to respect how fundamentally sound the Stree movies are. You see crows descend from the dark skies for dramatic effect and think of The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening, the Bosnian B-movie starring Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek.

All right folks, we are back in the labyrinth. For a third time. Lots of stuff that we remember from the earlier outings. Creaky two-hundred-year-old Bengali havelis. Locked rooms. Vengeful ‘aatmas’. Ghosts who flit about. And characters who spout their lines, and vanish.

Just like the earlier two Bhool Bhulaiyaa movies, kickstarted by Priyadarshan in 2007, the third of the horror comedy series by Director Anees Bazmee revolves around a phony psychic caught in the family drama of a haunted haveli. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 opens like one of those The Mummy preludes unfolding a dark history from 200 years ago only to cut to the present, signalling at the wicked all the wrongdoing has unleashed, which Ruhaan aka Rooh Baba’s (Kartik Aaryan) goofball ghostbuster must put an end to by hook or crook.

Sometimes, a film takes off with an unpredictably thoughtful ending. The beginning and the middle get written to lead up to it. Director Anees Bazmee and writer Aakash Kaushik seem to have had an unexpected climax in mind before they sat down to take the audience through a maze, keeping alive the question, “Who’s Manjulika?” With the return of Vidya Balan (Mallika) to the franchise, the entry of Madhuri Dixit (Mandira) and the tussle between them, the guessing game goes on.