Review: ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ Is Kept Afloat by Vidya Balan & Madhuri Dixit

There is no questioning the rewatch value of Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa – the scale, the engaging storytelling, the unforgettable music. And Vidya Balan and Akshay Kumar both in one of their most iconic roles. As far as horror comedies go, Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a classic – it’s not surprising, then, that the film became a franchise. One wouldn’t call Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 a direct sequel – perhaps the term ‘spiritual sequel’ is more fitting. 

Kartik Aaryan reprises his role as Rooh baba (or Ruhan) from the second film – a crook who uses people’s belief in the supernatural to trick them into parting with money and goods. At some point, he points at a woman and says, “Shaapit hai” and the family presumably just lets him leave with her. We never see or hear from her again – she has the same weightage in the plot as a necklace. But that is the kind of lowbrow humour Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 relies on for the most part.

Most of the actually funny bits come from slapstick humour owing to the cast’s ability to translate physical humour into an actual punchline. 

Rooh baba is taken to Raktaghat by a princess (Triptii Dimri as Meera) and her uncle; both are tight-lipped about his actual mission but the promise of money is too enticing for him to decline. As is the Bhool Bhulaiyaa staple, ‘punar janam’ (reincarnation) becomes the primary plot line. Ruhan learns that the ancestors of the royal family have moved into the stable and don’t have a penny to their name – the solution to their problems is a sprawling haveli that's haunted by a witch ‘Manjulika’. 

As one ornate door after another is opened, much to the local priest's disapproval, new characters enter the story – most notably, Mallika (Vidya Balan) who shows up to restore the haveli and Mandira (Madhuri Dixit), a potential buyer. 

And since this is a story of reincarnation (and anybody who doesn't know that Balan is Manjulika is living under a rock), we get a brief look into Mallika and Mandira’s centuries-old ‘rivalry’. From the second Balan enters the screen to her last scene, she spends every second proving why Bhool Bhulaiyaa should rightfully have been Manjulika’s franchise. She is striking and memorable and every bit as arresting as she was in the Priyadarshan-directorial. 

Her performance combined with Dixit’s fine-tuned act makes the back-and-forth between the two women the most interesting parts of the film. One scene where the duo are engaged in a tug-of-war of sorts has more narrative tension than most of the film. I found myself spending most of my time waiting for them to come back on screen. Both of them have an unexplained attachment to the haveli and the former king’s throne. As days pass, stranger things happen in the decaying halls and suspicions continue to rise. 

There are moments where the, pardon the pun, spirit of Bhool Bhulaiyaa peeks through – mostly in the secrecy with which Mandira and Mallika operate. The original constantly keeps you on your toes – one’s blame is placed on another and that’s the kind of confusion and tension Bazmee attempts to recreate here as well. For the most part, he succeeds.  

Director Anees Bazmee populates the film with comedic actors like Vijay Raaz, Sanjay Mishra, Ashwini Kalsekar, and Rajpal Yadav who try their best to elevate the film’s insistence on reaching for low hanging fruit. Suffice it to say that their talents are wasted. Another person who doesn’t get what she deserves is Triptii Dimri – I feel like a broken record as I say this for the umpteenth time. There are parts where you hope there is more to her character – a hidden motive, a past she hasn’t unlocked, or something mysterious up her sleeve but she gets relegated to the sidelines. It’s a mediocre role for a skilled actor and in the few scenes where she gets to showcase her skill, she does brilliantly. 

Aaryan, who is meant to ‘lead’ the film, seems to be playing an extension of himself (or at least the Kartik Aaryan we see on screen). In the film’s predecessor, Akshay Kumar managed to find the perfect balance between physical comedy and the more serious scenes and the shift never seemed jarring. And I wouldn’t make the comparison if it didn’t seem like Aaryan was playing an extension of Kumar too. Ruhan never gets to become a fully realised character in his own merit and so, it’s difficult for the audience to form an actual connection to the character.

And in a horror movie where the antagonists seem to be more compelling than the protagonist, it becomes difficult to buy into the director’s vision. To the film’s credit, it does have loftier ambitions than the tomfoolery it resorts too. The final ‘twist’, if one can call it that, almost redeems the film but the absolute lack of nuance tanks that too.

The last half an hour of the films seems to be operating at a different, and better, level than the rest. But alas, even the best of intentions can’t fulfill their purpose without proper execution. The film uses a story of injustice as a plot point but doesn’t make a proper effort to actually understand the experiences it is aiming to fight for. But hey, at least they’re on the battlefield, weak as their fight might be.  

Bhool Bhulaiyaa would not be the film it is without its songs and even Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 won’t be the movie it is without Bhool Bhulaiyaa’s songs. The reprisal of ‘Mere Dholna’ only goes to show how timeless the song is and who could complain when it is picturised on Madhuri Dixit and Vidya Balan? The originals that make their way into the film feel more out of place than anything else and so does the forced love story between Ruhan and Meera. 

The film’s VFX is better than what we’ve come to expect from the genre – considering Bollywood’s recent attempts at VFX in horror comedies. And for the most part, Bazmee keeps alive the idea that the horror in Bhool Bhulaiyaa comes more from the ‘unknown’ than an actual entity we can see. The camerawork and editing work hand-in-hand to create a world that is equal parts mystical and spooky – there is not much to fault about the film’s setting even though I found myself yearning for a smaller scale.