Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a remake of the 1993 Malayalam blockbuster Manichitratzu. Priyadarshan was once an assistant to director Fazil and he has faithfully adapted Fazil's film, scene by scene. In fact at one point, both Mohanlal and Akshay Kumar, playing psychiatrists, break into almost the same English dialogue-I'm going to break all conventional boundaries of psychiatry.
What the psychiatrists are attempting is to unravel the mysterious happenings in a large, ancient residence, in which, once upon a time a nobleman imprisoned a beautiful dancer, beheaded her lover and was forcibly going to marry her but she committed suicide.
Her beleaguered soul seems to be hovering around so crockery shatters by it self, people are inexplicably injured and of course the sound of gunghroos is heard all night.
Eddie Murphy used to do this great comic riff about why you never see Black people in a horror movie. Because, he said, black people are too smart. As soon as the first door creaks, they'll get the hell out of there.
Which is what the America-returned couple in Bhool Bhuliya should have done. But despite firm warnings, Siddharth and Avni, played by Shiney Ahuja and Vidya Balan, persist on staying and straying into locked rooms.
