Bhool Bhulaiyaa

Badrinarayan ‘Badri’ Chaturvedi [Manoj Joshi] heads a once-great royal family in a grand Varanasi palace, where locals whisper that the ancient halls are haunted by the spirit of Manjulika [Vidya Balan], a Bengal-born Odissi dancer whose tragedy echoes through the generations. The story traces back to Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan, a king whose passion for Manjulika led to a fateful double blow: the beheading of Shashidhar, Manjulika’s beloved dancer, and the imprisonment of Manjulika herself, as the king sought to force a marriage that would never be. Fueled by heartbreak and rage, Manjulika vowed vengeance on any successor of the royal line, and the palace’s elite ordered a sealing of her presence on the third floor with the help of powerful sorcerers and high priests.

Years later, Siddharth Chaturvedi [Shiney Ahuja], Badri’s nephew and the scion of the family, returns to the palace with his archeologist wife Avni [Vidya Balan], after a whirlwind romance in the United States. Their marriage wounds Siddharth’s childhood friend and Badri’s adopted daughter, Radha [Ameesha Patel], who has long carried a torch for him. Avni grows increasingly drawn to the legend surrounding Manjulika, digging into the palace’s dark past and the fates that have haunted its corridors. She learns how, decades before, the king’s jealous obsession and Manjulika’s sorrowful end set in motion a sealed spirit that could return when the third floor’s doors were breached.

The mystery thickens when Avni obtains a duplicate key from Batukshankar Upadhyay’s daughter, Nandini [Tarina Patel], and uses it to unlock the third-floor chamber, breaking the confinement of Manjulika’s spirit. Unnatural events cascade through the palace: sudden apparitions, eerie footsteps, and a chilling sense that something unseen is always watching. With Radha increasingly suspected as the source of the disturbances, Siddharth calls in an unconventional ally—Dr. Aditya Shrivastav [Akshay Kumar], a psychiatrist whose reputation for unorthodox methods rubs the household the wrong way but who soon proves invaluable.

Aditya’s approach unsettles the family at first, yet he earns wary trust by foiling an attempted poisoning of Siddharth when he intervenes in a dangerous tea-tasting gone wrong. That night, Aditya hears a ghungroo and a Bengali lullaby echoing from Manjulika’s room, and, adopting the guise of King Vibhuti Narayan, he communicates with the vengeful spirit, who vows to exact her revenge on the next Durgashtami. The plot thickens during Nandini’s engagement to the poet Sharad Pradhan [Vineeth Radhakrishnan], when Avni accuses Sharad of sexual harassment—a claim Sharad vehemently denies, and Aditya insists is rooted in Avni’s altered perceptions and past traumas rather than truth.

In truth, Aditya has been quietly investigating Avni’s condition and learns she experiences dissociative identity disorder, a revelation that reframes every strange incident as a fragmentation of Avni’s psyche rather than simple possession. He reveals that his own past is entangled with Yagyaprakash Bharti, the renowned exorcist summoned by Badri to exorcise Manjulika. Aditya once studied under Yagyaprakash, and the two men share a complicated bond that informs their current alliance. The family agrees to seek a controlled, humane resolution rather than a dramatic confrontation, while Avni’s alternate identities become the focal point of the investigation.

To guide the crisis to a climactic resolution, Yagyaprakash Bharti [Vikram Gokhale] arrives as the exorcist, and Aditya reveals that the cure may lie in giving Manjulika a purpose that fits her existence rather than feeding her rage. He and Yagyaprakash devise a plan to fulfill Manjulika’s driving motive without letting violence spill over. On Durgashtami, Avni fully assumes Manjulika’s identity—dressed as the dancer and moving to the haunting anthem she and Shashidhar once shared. Yagyaprakash pressures Manjulika to leave by threatening a symbolic act of killing the King, albeit with a twist: Siddharth is cast in the role of the King in the plan, and Aditya and Yagyaprakash orchestrate a staged murder using a lifelike dummy. The ruse succeeds, and Avni, guided by the manipulation and the care of those around her, is cured as the Manjulika persona finds its resolution and withdraws.

With the threat neutralized, the family breathes a cautious relief and expresses their gratitude to Aditya for his steadiness and unconventional wisdom. As the dust settles, Aditya admits his growing affection for Radha [Ameesha Patel], hinting at a future where he might be part of her life—and perhaps where her own heart can heal as he contemplates a possible union, with the couple considering the idea of marriage as a new chapter begins for them all.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:36