A still from Munjya .(courtesy: maddockfilms ) Konkani lore meets pop culture excess in Munjya , a horror comedy that lets the funny edge out the spooky, often unintentionally so. Messy and muddled, it demands willing suspension of disbelief and fails to secure it.
Directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written by Niren Bhatt on the basis of a story developed by Yogesh Chandekar, the Maddock Films production is the fourth entry in the banner's slate of supernatural flicks after Stree, Roohi and Bhediya . It is no patch on Stree and Bhediya and probably only marginally better than Roohi . Stree and Bhediya addressed themes that went well beyond the fear factor that the genre thrives on.
The former employed the occult to highlight female empowerment, the latter used the metaphor of a beast on the prowl and championed the cause of environmental conservation. Does Munjya do anything more than blending superficial humour and the terror of the dark? Not quite. At best, Munjya tells us that dread gets the better of us because we recoil from it.
Face it and resist it and victory will be yours, somebody tells Bittu (Abhay Verma), a young man who works in his mother's beauty salon and yearns to break free from her apron strings. Munjya feels far longer than its two hours because the mumbo-jumbo that it foists upon us gives way frequently to difficult-to-digest twaddle. It centres on a battle between a creature from the nether world and a youngster who has nightmares that he cannot wrap his h.
