The Bhootnii (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – The film revolves around a tree spirit that attacks virgin boys on Valentine’s Day.

My Take – With the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe films striking gold at the box office, Hindi cinema filmmakers and production houses are clamoring their attention towards the horror comedy genre, hoping to replicate the impressive success story.

The latest to fly out of the gate is this debut outing from writer-director Sidhaant Sachdeva, who attempts a similar outing in the vein of the Stree films. In the sense, it has a bit of every horror comedy you have ever seen: an angry ghost, and hilarious trio of friends who unknowingly find themselves entangled with the supernatural and of course a know-it-all professor. Sadly though, this time around the results are quite mixed.

While it is entertains in parts, with the screenplay effortlessly milking the BeYouNick and Aasif Khan‘s talents for humor and some hilarious one-liners, it falls short in every other department, particularly in delivering the necessary spooky element.

Sure, it attempts to provide a fresh base to the tried-and-tested formula by centering the narrative on unrequited love, but there is no denying that the film struggles to rise above the sub-par execution and the predictability that mars the screenplay throughout its 130 minutes run time. I

n the end, the Sanjay Dutt co-produced venture isn’t as scary or funny as the title suggests. Landing the experience somewhere in between, that could work as a one-time watch when you have absolutely nothing else to do.

The story mainly follows Shantanu (Sunny Singh), a student at St. Vincent’s College of Arts and Culture in Delhi that is famously known for a wishing tree called the Virgin Tree that is centered on the college campus. Though it is widely considered to be haunted and linked to certain suicides, each year, on Valentine’s Day, students hang trinkets, pictures and continue to worship it for romantic good luck.

But when a heartbroken Shantanu in a drunken state ends up lashing out at the tree for not fulfilling his desire of true love, he ends up summoning Mohabbat (Mouni Roy). A spirit who soon enough is convinced that she belongs with Shatanu and begins haunting anyone who may or may not come between them. Like his roommates, Sahil (Nikunj Lotia) and Nasir (Aasif Khan), and possibly Shantanu’s only true friend on the campus, Ananya (Palak Tiwari).

But as the mysterious happenings begin to increase by the fold, hoping to save their reputation, the college management ends up employing the services of a former student, Professor Krishna Tripathi aka Baba (Sanjay Dutt), a bizarre para-physicist who arrives with his quirky contraptions to uncover the truth and banish the entity.

From here begins a complex blend of comedy, romance, and something that passes as horror that goes into strange realms in the climax, unveiling Mohabbat’s tragic past, and a twist in the tale for Baba. The film unabashedly is set in an absurd terrain where we see a college that allows romance to thrive in the annual festivities and also encourages in paranormal investigations.

Though the basic story is a little different, director Sachdev and co-writer Vankush Arora’s screenplay doesn’t tread new ground, even when Santhosh Thundiyil’s cinematography occasionally lends the narrative an atmospheric touch. Despite a strong start, the film takes its time to find its groove in the patchy first half, with most sequences and song placements feeling like fillers. The second half gets comparatively worse.

The brand of humor does get some laughs, including a few self-referential nods to Mouni Roy led popular TV series Naagin, Sanjay Dutt starrer Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), among others, but even that stops working as the proceedings get more ludicrous with every passing minute.

The narrative, however, is riddled with inconsistencies—when Mohabbat takes human form to lure Shantanu, she’s constantly by his side. But once her identity as a ghost is revealed, she inexplicably starts vanishing for a specific period of time every day, conveniently giving Baba the time to do his work. Simply told, the film is just never thrilling, frightening or funny enough to pass itself off as an entertaining horror comedy.

Nevertheless, the performances are good enough across the board. Sanjay Dutt adds some swag and fits the role well. Sunny Singh, Nikunj Lotia, and Aasif Khan share excellent camaraderie and bring good laughs together. Mouni Roy is sincere and tries her to best to sell her spiritual role. Palak Tiwari too is very competent, and excels particularly in the dramatic sequences. On the whole, ‘The Bhootnii‘ is an uneven horror comedy that is occasionally hilarious, but mostly underwhelming.