Munjya, the latest instalment in the horror-comedy universe spawned by Stree and followed up by Bhediya, has neither the social commentary of the former nor the irreverent tone of the latter. It also doesn’t have the winning formula of creeps meshed with chuckles that made the previous outings in this ‘HCU’ such compelling films.

What Munjya does have is the potential for a solid film which it unfortunately squanders after the first 30 minutes. Stree touched upon an urban legend and took down patriarchy in the process and Bhediya brought alive a myth and drove home the need for environmental preservation. Even Roohi, the lesser-talked-about film in this universe, attempted to be an addition to the feminist supernatural sub-genre. But Munjya, even as it borrows generously from folklore and crafts a tale of a ghoul who returns to tick out its unfulfilled desires, makes a wispy and half-hearted effort to deliver a message which runs along the lines of ‘darr ke aagey jeet hain’.

Munjya is, therefore, a lost opportunity. Director Aditya Sarpotdar delves into the Maharashtrian folklore of the ‘Munjya’ aka the ghost of a young Brahmin boy who dies before his desire to marry a much older woman is fulfilled. He turns into a part impish, part scary but fully irritating spirit that grabs the first possible chance it gets to be freed of the tree in which it has spent more than 70 years. What Munjya — that looks like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings but behaves like Betaal from Vikram aur Betaal — wants is to be ‘married’ to the woman who had once spurned him.

Acting as Munjya’s reluctant vehicle is his descendant Bittu (Abhay Verma) whose mistaken encounter with the ghoul results in pandemonium. Before long, Munjya latches itself to Bittu as annoyingly as Fevikwik sticks between one’s fingers. However, his demand has now undergone a Gen-Z upgrade — Munjya wants to get hitched to Bela (Sharvari), Bittu’s close pal and the one he has held a torch for silently since childhood. That she happens to be the granddaughter of Munni, who Munjya once desired, seals the deal.

As mentioned earlier, the first half hour of Munjya is solid and sets up the intrigue well. That a large part of it takes place in the verdant Konkan plains — eye-catching during the day, mysterious by night — contributes immensely to the atmospherics, with the opening minutes of the film giving off a combined Tumbbad-Kantara vibe. Unlike Stree where the horror was more metaphorical than literal, Munjya’s early appearance gives Sarpotdar — working out of a script written by Yogesh Chandekar and Niren Bhatt’s screenplay — the crutch to use a computer-generated antagonist to tell his story.

Unfortunately, Munjya — whose largely unintelligible screeches are challenged by the gratingly loud background score — falls short when it comes to generating both chills and chortles.

What Munjya also lacks is a compelling message. Even though it starts off with the Neil Gaiman line from Coraline — ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten’ — the unnecessary chaos in the plot brought on by a middling attempt at physical comedy — there is a Sardar sidekick here whose filmmaking aspirations make him dub himself ‘Spielberg Singh’ — make Munjya far less effective than what it wants to be.

Add to that a protracted climax — which includes levitating goats, tentacled trees and shape-shifting spirits — and what we have is a hotchpotch of a film which is neither here nor there. The feeble attempt in the post-credits (which follows an item song) to tie this film with Bhediya is clearly an afterthought that doesn’t work.

What still make Munjya deserving of a one-time watch are its performances. With his Harry Potter look, Abhay Verma is a good choice for his part of a mousy young man who finally comes into his own and Sharvari, despite lesser screen time, is competent. Mona Singh does well despite being given short shrift while Sathyaraj — better known as Bahubali’s tour de force Kattappa — has fun with his over-the-top part. The film is peopled with half-a-dozen lesser-known faces, all of who do their job effectively, with a special mention going out to Suhas Joshi as Bittu’s grandmother.

While it remains to be seen what plans producer Maddock Films has for this instalment in its horror-comedy universe, we aren’t really sure if we want to see more of Munjya. Especially if it gobbles up a man’s b***s and describes them as ‘gulaab jamun’. Eeeew!