When the Bhool Bhulaiyaa sequel was announced, people had already given up hopes, rightly so. Because, let’s just face it, remakes and sequels aren’t exactly Bollywood’s cup of tea. Little did we know that it’d be worse than how we expected it to be. The ‘modernized’ Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 is a far cry from the original film and it has managed to butcher the concept of a sequel.
Neither the theme, nor the plot of the so-called sequel are in coherence with the first part. The only commonalities between both the films are the name of the ‘bhoot’, Rajpal Yadav as Chhote Pandit (who deserves better, like always) and well the use of haveli as the setting. And please, let’s just not call it a horror-comedy because it failed at both.
Honestly, we already have a better horror-comedy, that’s also closer to Bhool Bhulaiyaa than its sequel – Stree. If anything, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 should’ve taken notes. It’s basically that kid who copied the wrong assignment.
For starters, both Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Stree have a tale that comments on deep-rooted issues like misogyny. Where in-turn, the sequel gave us the opposite – ‘fighting women’. Go, Bollywood!
While the supposed ‘chudail‘ in all the films seem to have a purpose that comes from a good place, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 only confused us in its maze-like plot to make the ghost an empathetic one.
Also, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 unapologetically lacks logic, which the other two films tried hard to keep in touch with. While they had a psychiatrist and a paranologist, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 had a random guy, who claims that he can talk to spirits. And what happens next is no surprise – he almost forms a cult with his followers. To make things worse, it relied deeply on superstitions and a lot of ‘kaala jaadu’.
Don’t even get me started on the casting. For comedy to work on-screen, it requires more than just funny dialogues, not that Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 had those. Stree had actors like Aparshakti Khurana, Pankaj Tripathi, Abhishek Banerjee and Rajkummar Rao, who managed to lift up the humor of the already well-written dialogues. Whereas, the ‘sequel’ gave us fat-shaming jokes and stale humor for comic relief, and to sit through it was the only scary thing about the film. Somehow, the actors made it worse with trying to copy body-language of the characters in the first part.
Stree and Bhool Bhulaiyaa had something important for its female characters, and that’s what I missed seeing in Kiara Advani’s character. She had no substance to offer to the film’s plot, other than unnecessary songs, and well, hiding in plain sight. Tabu was literally the only good thing about Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, but even her commitment to the role couldn’t save the plot.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa was a start of horror comedies that not only pick up from superstitions, but also dig deep, to mirror the society. And, Stree did it better by drawing a parallel of issues that women have to deal with. That’s how you move forward with time.