Bhooth Bangla

Priyadarshan’s recent outing, Bhooth Bangla, revolves around an ancient demonic presence that looms over a community and eventually ensnares its protagonist. Conceived as a horror tale interspersed with comic beats, surprises, and moments of suspense, the film is packed into a structure that rarely holds these elements in balance and makes for extremely tepid viewing.

Vasudev Acharya (Jisshu Sengupta), a London-based professor, lives with his debt-ridden son, Arjun (Akshay Kumar) and daughter Meera (Mithila Palkar), whose impending marriage is bound to a deeply superstitious family in India. While he is away on a lecture in Sydney, a lawyer informs Meera that she has inherited ₹500 crore and the ancestral mansion, Acharya Niwas, in the remote town of Mangalpur in India. Without informing his father, Arjun decides to host Meera’s long-delayed wedding there. Upon arrival, he is warned of a longstanding curse, where brides are abducted by a demon, Vadhusur, halting weddings for generations. Brushing this aside as folklore, Arjun presses on, only for the mansion to grow increasingly disturbed by sinister events…

With Bhooth Bangla, Priyadarshan returns to the haunted template he once reworked in Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007), itself adapted from the Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu (1993). This time, however, the material feels threadbare. In the years since, the success of the Stree franchise has recalibrated the expectations of the horror-comedy, yet Priyadarshan, along with co-writers Rohan Shankar and Abilash Nair, seems curiously out of step with that shift. What emerges is an uneven tonal arrangement in which horror, comedy, and thriller mechanics fail to cohere.

The film’s structure is unwieldy, taking far too long to find its footing, with information that could easily have been pared down. The plot adopts a mechanical impulse, and revelations arrive on cue but without adequate groundwork, and comic interludes intrude where restraint might have served better. Admittedly, there is occasional craft here and there, and the odd ingenuity, but these remain isolated—glimpses and little more.

The folklore surrounding Vadhusur holds a certain promise and could have anchored the narrative, yet its exposition is laboured, generating a sense of drag rather than mystery. The film leans heavily on jump scares, while the idea of an ancient evil persisting across generations — rich with allegorical possibility — is reduced to a series of twists that privilege surprise over resonance. The comic detours fare no better. Jagdish Kewalramani (Paresh Rawal), the wedding planner, and his electrician Sunder (Rajpal Yadav) are saddled with broad, often lecherous gags that feel forcibly inserted, prompting momentary, almost reflexive laughter, but the writing remains perfunctory. Even the possessed figure, which ought to introduce disruption and dread, is rendered curiously hollow.

Akshay Kumar, also a producer, dominates the film, bringing a restless, high-spirited energy that sustains the narrative even when it falters. Jisshu Sengupta lends Vasudev a degree of gravitas, particularly in the flashback passages, and shares a fleeting but suggestive chemistry with Tabu in her cameo, but one that feels sadly underdeveloped. Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, and Asrani are largely deployed for comic relief, their presence functional rather than integral. Rajesh Sharma makes an impression despite limited screen time, while Zakir Hussain struggles with a sketchily written role. The two principal female characters, played by Mithila Palkar and Wamiqa Gabbi, are also thinly drawn, their roles never quite acquiring dramatic weight.

Divakar Mani’s cinematography is serviceable without ever becoming striking. MS Aiyappan Nair’s editing might have benefited from a leaner cut, as the film generates a feeling longer than its material warrants. Shahaab Alam’s sound design and Ronnie Raphael’s background score work in tandem to manufacture typical scares, though with diminishing returns. The song, Ram Ji Aake Bhala Karenge, gestures toward the enduring appeal of Ami Je Tomar from Bhool Bhulaiyaa and manages a partial echo, while the rest of Pritam’s compositions pass by without leaving much of an imprint.

Bhooth Bangla is easily among the weaker works in Priyadarshan’s Hindi oeuvre, suggesting a director woefully out of step with his own strengths. More at ease with the comic and the farcical, he repeatedly punctures rather than sustains tension, diffusing moments that might otherwise have gathered a measure of unease. The result is a film that circles a promising intrigue without ever quite settling into it.

Hindi, Horror, Comedy, Color