Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 Review – A Journey Into a Mansion of Missed Opportunities

Bhool Bhulaiyaa movie’s part number three has released today inside theaters. I watched it. If it wasn’t my responsibility to watch the whole picture and tell you whether it’s good or not, whether you should watch it or not, then two things would have happened: first, either I would have gotten up and left in the middle, or second, I would have died inside the theater. That’s the kind of movie they’ve made. That hyperbole may sound dramatic, but no metaphor has felt more appropriate to describe my experience sitting through this overlong, uneven, strangely hollow film. This isn’t the kind of movie that gradually loses your attention – this is the kind that never really tries to earn it to begin with.

I made one mistake. Just two days ago, I re-watched the Akshay Kumar Bhool Bhulaiyaa that had come earlier. But you don’t take tension about that, because even if you don’t watch that one, this Kartik Aryan one is not going to impress in any department. That was my first red flag: nostalgia could have inflated my standards, but Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 simply fails on its own merits. There is no emotional arc, no genuine fear, and almost no comedy that lands. It is a sequel that survives entirely on brand recognition, not storytelling substance.

Okay, okay, we will go systematically.

Story: A Flatline in the Heart of West Bengal

First, the story. The entire story takes place in West Bengal. This means you will get to see a lot of Bengali accent – the cheap kind, like how they loosely do Punjabi. Exactly that. The film tries to build authenticity by caricaturing an entire region, delivering dialogue that sounds more like an imitation than an honest portrayal. Instead of immersing us in a setting, it weaponizes accents as punchlines, and that in itself becomes a constant distraction.

First, we meet Rooh Baba, character played by Kartik Aaryan, who fools people by making them think he can see ghosts. “I can feel ghosts, I can talk to ghosts, ghosts can enter my body.” By saying such things he takes money from people. Then one day he meets Triptii Dimri, who tempts him with 1 crore rupees and tells him to come with her. She says, “We have a very old mansion in which Manjulika resides, so no one stays there. With your help, we will finish this Manjulika issue, sell the mansion, and earn lots of money.”

Everything I just told you – I felt very bad saying it. It felt like I’m giving heavy spoilers. Because the “meat” of the story is literally only this. Beyond this, nothing. Literally, nothing is in the movie. This is not a case of subtle tension building, or narrative minimalism, or even suspenseful atmosphere. This is a film with one idea, stretched to a feature-length runtime purely through filler scenes and comedic detours that never connect to the actual conflict.

After this setup, once they reach the mansion, skip ahead one and a half hours. The movie’s climax starts at that point. Between these two points, the story doesn’t evolve at all. It doesn’t move forward even a bit.

So then what happens in all that time? First, they try to make you laugh. And here I want your focus on the word try, because it doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen.

Comedy: A Ghost Is Less Scary Than the Jokes

Comedy is very subjective, and because I went to the afternoon show, there were at least 20 people in my screen, and they were laughing at the jokes said in the picture. And I was scratching my head, thinking, “Yaar, there was nothing funny.” The humor in Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 isn’t just bland – it’s shamelessly lazy. Visual gags, rhymes, juvenile interruption jokes – they appear and disappear like ghosts themselves, but without even the courtesy of tension.

What kind of humor the movie has – let me give you an example. Mostly, they have placed three characters to create comedy: Sanjay Mishra, Rajpal Yadav, and – Ashwini Kalsekar. This trio joins in. They leave the main ghost story aside and show you gags, trying situational comedy. In one scene, Rajpal Yadav’s character Chhota Pandit says, “We came inside this palace in a Rolls-Royce,” then they show a photo of a bullock cart with two bulls, and on it is written “Rolls Royce.”. Not funny.

Whatever idea we got from the movie’s trailer – exactly that happened. Comedy doesn’t work at all. Not even a little. And we can’t put full fault on actors because they’re talented, they have delivered before. It’s the writing and direction. I don’t know what kind of person thinks “This is funny.” There is no drip of wit, no clever dialogue, just slapstick and childish misdirection. The kind of humor that assumes volume equals humor, not timing or wit.

Triptii Dimri’s character says it’s time for milk, so they bring milk and feed it to a cow. This is supposed to be funny. Laugh.

Vijay Raaz – he was barely noticeable. He said something and then you realize, “Oh, that was Vijay Raaz.” That’s how funny it was. I will only say one scene was funny: the crow biryani scene.

That is the single joke in the movie that works – and even then, it feels more like a flicker in a blackout than any real illumination.

Casting: When Even Legends Can’t Save a Sinking Ship

But since I’m already talking about the trailer – after watching that, the little bit of hope left in the picture was that if anyone can save it, it would be Vidya Balan’s Manjulika and Madhuri Dixit. I feel very sad to report this, but that didn’t happen. Their characters did add a little seriousness to the movie, because of which at least my attention didn’t completely drop – I wasn’t falling asleep. And even if I was, I was forcing myself to stay awake thinking, “Okay, maybe something serious is happening.”

This is the film’s greatest tragedy. When you bring back Vidya Balan – the beating heart of the first film – you create expectation. You evoke legacy. You invoke cinematic memory. But Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 treats her like a flavor, not a foundation. She and Madhuri Dixit appear as if the film is checking boxes on a nostalgia checklist, not because they organically belong to the story.

Before Bhool Bhulaiyaa part 2 released, the atmosphere was the same: not much expectation, but after release it worked. So they thought they should make it again. But this time, they doubled down on the things that weren’t good even in the second part.

Kartik Aaryan’s performance – I mean it’s alright. He did what was needed. We can’t give too much fault to him for comedy because even Vijay Raaz couldn’t make it work. But if you’ve watched Kartik Aaryan’s old movies you already know what kind of performance he would give – and he gave exactly that.

Triptii Dimri is returning as Manjulika – that was the only point in the movie that could spark my interest. And in the first half they even show one scene where she speaks in a ghostly voice with a scary face. But now that the movie is over and I’m thinking about it – that scene makes no sense because of the ending twist.

That one moment of horror, the singular scene that provokes curiosity, becomes retroactively meaningless. It’s not a breadcrumb – it’s misdirection. The film tricks you not through intelligent writing, but through inconsistency.

Glimmers of Good: Count Them on One Hand

Look, there were a few things in this movie that I found okay, and they are so few I can literally count them on one hand. These are the things that kept me from falling asleep: Rajpal Yadav’s one scene referencing last year’s biggest movie – very good; Madhuri Dixit and Vidya Balan’s “Mere Dholna” performance; and the twist they threw at the end involving Manjulika.

And yes, when “Mere Dholna” plays, the theater remembers why this franchise exists. The nostalgia kicks in. The room breathes. There is reverence in the air – short-lived, but powerful. That sequence is elevated not by direction, but by the legacy of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 1.

Now, why I said they “threw” the twist – because it is definitely unexpected. Even after thinking for two hours, you won’t guess it. And usually that would be great for a mystery movie. But to deliver this twist, the movie shot itself in the foot.

The One-and-a-Half-Hour Void

Remember the point I said – after the first 20 minutes, there’s a one-and-a-half hour gap where nothing happens? That’s because of this finale twist.

Think about it: the setting is a huge mansion where a ghost roams freely, very scary, lots of stories about her. In the beginning they showed how violently she killed many people. All of that is in the movie’s starting. But in the one-and-a-half hours in between, she does nothing. Manjulika’s ghost doesn’t do even the minimum needed to maintain fear.

The movie runs in segments: she appears, scares someone, disappears. Then comedy segment. Then again ghost segment. She appears, scares someone, disappears. Nothing impactful happens for one and a half hours.

Even the little interesting things they show don’t make sense because of that end twist. Literally think about it: then why was that character making such faces and doing such actions in the first half?

Horror: The Jump Scare Algorithm

Finally, let’s talk about the horror in this movie. You know I am a big scaredy-cat. A huge one. I went alone to watch this picture. No one was sitting near me. You know how many times I actually felt scared? Once or half a time. Because the majority of the time it only does one thing: builds a little suspense, then suddenly drops a loud sound to scare you. A character turns around slowly, someone is standing there.

There is no craft here. Horror is treated like a formula: silence → violin note → boom sound → cut to comedy. It’s mechanical. It’s predictable. And worst of all, it’s joyless. Fear should linger. It should suffocate. It should question your belief in what’s real. Instead, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 treats horror like a background track.

In today’s time – especially in part 2 and part 3 – the sets and lighting don’t look scary. The comedy style – exactly the same. In fact in some scenes I felt Kartik Aaryan was trying to imitate Akshay Kumar – like grabbing someone’s hair and doing actions, or stretching words at the end of sentences to sound funny. The moment I heard that, I was like, Akshay Kumar does this.

When a star begins echoing the charisma of a predecessor, you don’t get homage – you get impersonation. And that is exactly what Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 feels like: a movie trying to remember how the earlier parts worked instead of figuring out why they worked.

Final Verdict: A Weak Sequel Built on Nostalgia, Not Cinema

If you haven’t understood yet from what I said – I did not like the picture. The little heart part 2 had at the end – even that is weaker here. I’m definitely not going to watch it a second time. Even if you pay for my ticket, popcorn, cold drink – still I won’t go.

But when it comes to recommending it – it depends on your taste. If you enjoy bare-minimum comedy where they just rhyme words, or the kind of situational jokes I described, if you get scared just by loud sound effects and loud music – then maybe you might like it. I don’t know. I’m only saying this because I saw some people laughing in my theater. So there is a chance you may also laugh. I didn’t.

Rating: 1/5 – A Haunted Mansion of Wasted Potential