Bhooth Bangla Review:
Charlie Chaplin once famously said: “My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.” Mr. Chaplin probably didn’t have his derrière geysered up in the air, or got it charred on red-hot coal, or inflamed at the end of a burning candle; a string of assaults poor Paresh Rawal undergoes all in the course of one film. He also probably didn’t have to sit through Akshay Kumar’s signature, giddy giggle, which, once enjoyable, now felt shrill to the ears.
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Wamiqa Gabbi, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Jisshu Sengupta, Mithila Palkar, Tabu and Manoj Joshi
Directed by: Priyadarshan
It’s not merely a throwaway detail that Bhooth Bangla shares a title with the 1965 Mehmood-starrer which is widely credited to be the country’s first Hindi horror-comedy. Priyadarshan, the director of the 2026 film, solidly introduced the genre and unintentionally paved the way for its “universification” back in 2007 with Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Some gags from it might not have aged well but the film had an exemplary balance of horror and humour. It gave you equal chills and chuckles. Bhooth Bangla starts with the same promise. For fans of Priyadarshan’s brand of comedy with Akshay Kumar at the helm and Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav and the late Asrani in the mix, Bhooth Bangla seems like a nostalgia treat. It sets up patiently, with mood building and conversational humour (thankfully sans any irritating laugh jingles in the background) but soon starts testing your patience. The punchlines come too late, too weak and the film often feels bloated, struggling to make you burst into laughter.
After being informed that his grandfather’s demise has made him heir to a royal palace, London-bred Arjun Acharya (Akshay) lands in the fictional village of Mangalpur to use the haveli for his sister’s wedding and also to pay off his debts. But the village is reeling under the curse of Vadhusur, a demon who abducts newly-wed brides. A marriage ceremony is a strict no-no but Arjun is adamant. He starts residing in the haunted house along with a motley group consisting of a wedding planner (Paresh Rawal) and his lightman nephew, played by Rajpal Yadav. What unfolds is classic slapstick humour (Rajpal literally gets smacked in the face more than once) where misunderstanding and confusion culminate into chaos.
For an overwhelming “comedy-director” reputation, atleast in Hindi cinema, Priyadarshan builds up the dread better. Some scenes with Vadhusur jump-scaring as soon as the lights go out are done with the deftness of a competent horror filmmaker but they soon become repetitive and thus lose inventiveness. The laughs, however, are laboured with too much reliance on physical comedy than situational humour. Akshay slaps, kicks and loses his shit in a desperate attempt to evoke some giggles. The writing thins out soon and the film becomes a garbled mess borrowing ideas from everywhere be it Lights Out (2016) or Stree 2 (2024). The man-bat entity Vadhusur seems like it stumbled from sets of an MHCU project (Akshay is actually touted to play a “Thanos like” supervillain in Dinesh Vijan’s universe).
At a runtime inching towards 3-hours, Bhooth Bangla has a lot of fluff from legend-building to flashbacks. It becomes a droll as it tries to repurpose the plot-highlights of Bhool Bhulaiyaa in an updated setting. The first half sails better as a traditional Priyadarshan-style closed-room comedy with Akshay, Paresh, Rajpal and Asrani bouncing off jokes, which mostly falter but some land. I would anyday take Akshay’s comic struggle over Kartik Aaryan’s. The second half, however, sidelines the humour and gets into laborious storytelling. Tabu makes an appearance. She even delivers an Ami Je Tomar-like dance but by this time you are dried up and everything slides off.
Bhooth Bangla suffers from a scattered screenplay and dated humour. It functions, feebly, as a greatest hits version of Priyadarshan’s comedy classics. In a scene, Akshay breaks out into his, now meme-fied, dialogue “behen darr gayi”. He is delivering the line for his sister in the film (played by Mithila Palkar). There is no setup or punchline, just a dead callback. I chuckled out of nostalgia. It’s sad that a Priyadarshan film has become a better memory than an experience.