12 years of Bhool Bhulaiyaa: Nobody else but Akshay Kumar could do it!

Kartik Aaryan has a tall order to live up to Akshay Kumar in Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2. it's not easy to amalgamate the two diametrically different genres and come out successful.

Before the world saw Amar Kaushik's Stree, a film about a vengeful yet vulnerable spirit of a woman yearning for true love, it was Priyadarshan's Bhool Bhulaiyaa that blended horror and comedy into one narrative. The Malayalam filmmaker peeped into his own originals and rehashed them into Bollywood films. This time, his source of inspiration was Manichitrathazu, the Mohanlal-Shobana classic about a woman's unfinished business and the repercussions it has on a family that has just moved into a haunted mansion.

There has to be something about the plot that continued to inspire filmmakers for so long. Right from Chandramukhi to Nagavalli, the list goes on. Bhool Bhulaiyaa was sandwiched in between, but it came out at a time when the term 'remake' wasn't as vociferously used as it is today. It also came out at a time when Akshay Kumar was enjoying the finest phase of his career, very similar to the reign he's ruling now. Fans wanted to see Kumar, and not necessarily the narrative he occupied. For them, nothing else mattered.

But after having seen the film, I felt a lot of things. Firstly, the treatment was solemn and not as sublimely silly as it was in Chandramukhi. Kumar entered the frame a few minutes before the interval, and the Hare Ram song, which became a rage back then, was kept for the end credits. Priyadarshan maybe wanted to show the fans and critics there's a lot more to the film than the stardom of the man who's carrying the plot on his shoulders. And yes, Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a lot more than an Akshay Kumar show.

We may have entered the cinema halls to watch him but while exiting, we couldn't stop raving about Vidya Balan. It was a complex part that the actor pitched with precision. The twist in the tale was unexpected and unpredictable, and so was the film's shift from comedy to drama to horror. In someone else's hands, this film may have collapsed right as the plot kicked in, but Kumar and Balan powered Bhool Bhulaiyaa to commercial and critical success. And they weren't alone! All of the filmmaker's frequent and favourite actors like Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Manoj Joshi, and Asrani made their way to create an ensemble.

Over the years, the film has transpired tons of memes on social media, particularly the scenes between Kumar and Yadav. Both the performers have always been uninhibited about their farcical and inane celluloid traits and revelled in indulging in tomfoolery, all for giving the audiences a rollicking time. And in a way, they have succeeded all the time.

Well, here's hoping that Kartik Aaryan lives up to the original film. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 also stars the talented Kiara Advani in the lead role.

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