Thamma

The film revolves around a struggling television journalist Alok Goyal (Ayushmann Khurrana) staying in Delhi with his parents (Paresh Rawal and Geeta Agarwal Sharma). He once goes on a jungle adventure with his friends outside the city. He becomes a victim of a bear attack and is forced to hide in a cave-like place for safety. Just then, a beautiful girl (Rashmika Mandanna) rescues him. Alok gets to know that her name is Tadaka and she is a part of a tribe of Betaals led by the crazy Yakshasan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). People from the tribe capture Alok just when he and Tadaka are getting attracted to each other. Tadaka defies the tribe’s rules and frees Alok. But in order to save herself from her tribe for being a traitor, she too moves to Delhi with him. This encounter changes Alok’s life forever.

A genre-breaching inter-species love story, Munjya and Zombivli director Aditya Sarpotdar’s Thamma harks back to a character or two that are integral to the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe (MHCU) while it marks out the way forward for the evolving franchise with a pair of new all-powerful figures who now have their tasks cut out. Does Thamma have enough crackle to be a fitting Diwali release? For the most part, yes. Rooted in all-encompassing folklore, it mashes up a medley of fantasy conventions and rustles up a tale in which the boundaries of credulity are constantly tested but in a fun sort of way.

Yet another Maddock stable offering, with the by-now familiar fix of the natural and supernatural, risque humour, in-house jokes, meta-movie references and item numbers, Thamma goes one better, by giving us not one but two of those. And a heavier star slate than before, with a combo of Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna, playing a pair of star-crossed lovers whose romance is overseen by betaals and bhediyaas and other mythological creatures. But I have to sadly report that the law of diminishing returns has clearly set in, in the work of a director who gave us the comparatively perky ‘Munjya’ and ‘Kakuda’: there is so little that engages in this crowded canvas, written by Niren Bhatt, Suresh Mathew and Afrun Falara, that the result is a pair of hurting ears and glazed eyes.

One of several things franchise filmmaking has taken from us is the satisfaction of seeing entire stories play out. When you always have one eye on the future, and when you aren’t sure which parts of your current project viewers will take to, the easiest thing is to keep all options open. Decision-making is replaced by decision-deferring and the audience is stuck in storytelling hell.

Indian folklore is full of mythical beings. Some shapeshift, some have terrifying fangs, some are into blood-sucking, and almost all of them fly. In some mythology-linked stories, these beings that once appeared in novels and comics are now popular again as superheroes, following in the footsteps of their Western counterparts. In Aditya Sarpotdar’s Thamma, the creature community in focus is of the vetaals who reside deep within the jungles. They have a large army of both good and evil individuals who are sworn to either protect or destroy the human race.

Maddock Films’ “Stree-verse” is arguably the most enjoyable franchise kicking around Hindi cinema these days. Though that’s not saying much. The promising horror-comedy universe—made up of Stree, Stree 2, Bhediya, and Munjya— enters its fifth instalment with Thamma, from Munjya director Aditya Sarpotdar back at the helm. This time, it’s vampires.