Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Director: Aditya Sarpotdar
Writers: Niren Bhatt, Yogesh Chandekar, Tushar Ajgaonkar
When Bittu, a shy young man, visits his native village for a cousin’s engagement, he finds himself in the grip of an ancestral spirit called Munjya. The evil spirit terrorizes Bittu to find Munni, a woman he wants to marry. It is up to the timid Bittu to fight back and protect those he loves from Munjya’s ghostly antics.
About two hours long, the 2024 horror-comedy “Munjya” is set in Maharashtra and begins with a flashback to how Munjya became a dreaded spirit bound to a tree in the 1950s. The writers tie an interesting lore to Munjya, complete with ritualistic solutions on how to get rid of wicked entities like him. Actor Abhay Verma plays protagonist Bittu, who helps his mother Pammi (Mona Singh) run her parlour, although he dreams of going to the U.S. for studying. Sharvari Wagh plays Bittu’s crush, Bela, who runs a Zumba studio and unfortunately becomes entangled with Bittu’s misadventures with the monster Munjya.
The first few minutes of “Munjya” evoke memories of the 2018 horror film “Tumbbad,” but it is only because of the similar setting – a beautiful rural Maharashtra. However, as the plot progresses, “Munjya” unfolds as a very different film, with none of the charm, grit, or tension that made “Tumbbad” such a compelling watch, so a comparison between the two is unfair. “Munjya” struggles to find its voice in the first half; it’s neither scary enough to be an eerie horror movie nor adequately funny to fall in the “horror comedy” genre. And the special effects for the ghostly Munjya are quite awful; he looks like an angry bald Groot with tree acne, if tree acne were a thing. Or like a low-budget tree version of Gollum from “Lord of the Rings.” Either way, Munjya the monster is almost never scary in the film. Gollum kept whispering for his ‘precious’, Munjya keeps hissing for his ‘Munni’.
Abhay Verma is consistently convincing and likable as protagonist Bittu, a sweet-natured mama’s boy, while Mona Singh is fantastic as his fierce, protective mom. Sharvari Wagh as Bittu’s love interest, Bela, is a generic, cheery character—a role that could’ve been played by anybody else, and it wouldn’t make much difference. She is a lot more memorable and charming in her supporting role in ‘Maharaj’.
It’s in the second half that “Munjya” finally gets entertaining, with the primary conflict finally reaching a crescendo and Bittu’s friend recruiting the help of a self-styled godman/exorcist called Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj). Despite his small cameo, Sathyaraj (Bahubali/Chandramukhi 2) is hilarious in his part and gets a pitch-perfect parody entry as a Christian faith healer who ‘cures’ possessed individuals on stage.
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If it weren’t for the awful VFX, Munjya the ghost could’ve been a lot more intimidating as the titular antagonist of the movie; however, he does manage to have an infuriatingly annoying personality rather than that of a ghastly ghoul. Munjya haunts Bittu to look for his childhood love, and the climactic conflict involves Bittu and his cousins working to outwit the demon with Elvis Karim Prabhakar’s help. Thankfully, there are no songs in the “Munjya” to disrupt the story and the background track is adequately engaging to keep things moving.
While the climax feels chaotic and overstretched, it serves up some chuckle-worthy moments and is quite entertaining. There’s even a thin message in the end – that one shouldn’t obsess over someone who doesn’t love them back and should learn to let go.
Rating: 6 out of 10. You can stream “Munjya” on Disney Hotstar.
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