CAST: Kartik Aaryan, Kiara Advani,Tabu, Rajpal Yadav, Sanjay Mishra, Rajesh Sharma, Amar Upadhyay, Siddhant Ghegadmal.

DIRECTED BY: Anees Bazmee

BLUF: 

Ruhan Randhawa/Rooh Baba (Kartik Aaryan) claims that he can see dead people in love with Reet Thakur (Kiara Advani). As love blossoms between Ruhan and Reet, mysterious adventures begin.

Ruhan, Reet and Kanika Sharma (Tabu) get trapped in a haunted haveli and then begin Ruhan’s quest to find Manjulika, who is ready to face the situation.

This horror-comedy flick is a sequel to Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007).

MEAT AND THE POTATOES

Ruhan and Reet meet while traveling in a bus and decide to spend a day at a music festival, therefore giving us a non-hummable dance number in the middle of a ski resort where people wearing beach clothes were dancing in an open tent. As they head home, they come to know that the bus that they missed, had eventually had an accident and all people on board were killed.

On calling home, Reet overhears a conversation between her sister and her to-be-husband revealing that they are in love. Reet decides to let her family continue to think that she is dead hoping that the two lovers may unite. She takes Ruhan’s help and goes with him to stay in her family’s ancestral home which was supposed to be haunted by Manjulika- an evil spirit.

The rest of the story is about a comedy of errors and how the spirit that haunts the ancestral home makes its presence felt.

IN THE KNOW

There are parts of the movie when in a bid to be caricaturish, you doubt if Kartik Aaryan can act but then he jerks himself back into the plot.

The VFX and the CGI are amatuerish especially the horror scenes where the overlapping of birds and other creatures on the canvas is done extremely shottily.

Akash Kaushik keeps the template of the story & screenplay very similar to the original. 

The script follows the usual Indian horror cliches of ‘pulling your legs when asleep’, ‘backward feet’ etc. but they’re smartly evened with either the absurd one-liners or some wacky gags. The gags are as senseless as many other Farhad Samji/ Anees Bazmee films but they work here in parts. Manu Anand makes the horror sequences stick but the quality of the CGI is a bummer.

Kartik Aaryan takes time to slide into the comedy but once he takes on the caricature, he builds on it.

The winner is however, Tabu. The beautiful, graceful actor proves why she is the queen that she is.

Kiara Advani has two songs and really not much to do beyond that.

Rajpal Yadav & Sanjay Mishra are funny and hold the filler comedy together brilliantly.

Sandeep Shirodkar remixes Hare Ram Hare Krishna’s tune and its a fun wrap watch with the hook step for tiktokers.

Arijit Singh’s ‘Ami Je Tomar’ is Arijit classic but beyond that the music doesn’t stick.