Munjya Movie Review: The focus is on the titular creature, but Abhay Verma as the child fighting to keep his sanity does enough not to be overshadowed. Mona Singh, Sharvari Wagh, and Suhas Joshi all perform admirably in a film that isn’t really about them.
Munjya is a horror comedy that combines Konkani legend with pop culture excess, often unwittingly. It is messy and confusing, requiring a willing suspension of disbelief.
The Maddock Films movie, directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written by Niren Bhatt based on a screenplay conceived by Yogesh Chandekar, is the fourth in the banner’s slate of spooky films, following Stree, Roohi, and Bhediya. It pales in comparison to Stree and Bhediya, and it is probably only somewhat better than Roohi.
Stree and Bhediya tackled issues that extended far beyond the genre’s emphasis on terror. The former exploited the occult to promote female empowerment, while the latter used the metaphor of a predatory beast to advocate for environmental conservation. Does Munjya do anything more than combine superficial humour with the fear of the dark? Not exactly.
At best, Munjya explains that dread overcomes us because we retreat from it. Someone tells Bittu (Abhay Verma), a young guy who works in his mother’s beauty salon and wishes to be free of her apron strings, that if he faces it and resists it, triumph will come.
Munjya feels much longer than its two hours because the jargon it throws at us regularly gives way to difficult-to-digest twaddle. It revolves around a battle between a creature from the netherworld and a child who has nightmares he can’t understand. People believe he is on drugs. He finds it difficult to deny their suspicions.
Bittu’s mother, Pammi (Mona Singh), is overprotective and opposes the concept of the youngster leaving the nest in pursuit of greener pastures – and a life of his own. However, he must deal with more than just his mother. Munjya, the child demon, is more playful than malefic and chases Bittu ceaselessly.
Seventy years ago, in a lovely and gorgeous Konkan town by the sea, a teenager infatuated with an older girl died within days of his mundan. Unfulfilled yearning transforms him into a lovelorn ghoul seeking atonement in the form of human sacrifice, a ritual he was unable to execute as a living and breathing youth.
Munjya follows Bittu from the forest to Pune in search of Munni, the girl he loved and lost. Bittu’s boyhood companion, Bela (Sharvari Wagh), who is older than him yet the object of his suppressed desire, is unknowingly drawn into a deal that jeopardizes her life.
The VFX is primitive, and the CGI creature, an impish, Gremlin-like thing who prowls around at will, is not the type of gadget that will make the audience fear God. Munjya, visible only to Bittu, refuses to release the youngster until his will is done. That signals danger for both Bittu and the film. The creature, like the film, changes shape from time to time. Munjya never quite finds a strong core.
Thunder, lightning, sea waves, eerie shadows in the forest, and a tree with a tentacled trunk all work together to create a sense of mystery and dread. However, Munjya never manages to persuade the audience to buy into the wild and wayward narrative that it spins.
Neither the prowling CGI beast nor the youngster it torments inspire fear, alarm, or empathy. Yes, an attempt is made to give Bittu a cherubic Harry Potter-like appearance; he is a man who must dig deep within himself to uncover the magic that would help him defeat the tenacious Munjya.
Bittu never loses his eyeglasses, no matter how many falls he has. He sleeps with his specs on. We want him to get out of trouble, but his Sikh friend and confidant Diljit Singh Dhillon “Spielberg”, a cameraman who aims to be a director, is far more interesting.
Late in the film, a charlatan named Elvis Karim Prabhakar appears with his ‘hand of god’ to expel ghosts. Bittu and his friend witness him peddling his miracle. They request his assistance in defeating Munjya. The conflict moves back to the forest, where it all began. From there on out, it’s free for all.
Cast: Sharvari, Abhay Verma, Mona Singh and S Sathyaraj
Director: Aditya Sarpotdar
Munjya, shot with remarkable flair by cinematographer Saurabh Goswami, but rarely scary enough to cause jump scares. Everything feels so ludicrous that it would have worked much better as an animated feature. Live action tends to make things so literal that the fascination inherent in the concept is severely diminished. Animation would have allowed the writers and director more latitude with the fantastical elements that a folk legend-inspired movie like this requires.
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