Munjya Review

It's quite interesting to see a movie based on the folklore of a culture you are familiar with, because you can understand some of the lore behind the movie's story better through your own experiences. You see, I - like the protagonist Bittu in Munjya - am also from Pune with an ancestral home in the Konkans, and it was fun to get all the small references to Maharashtra, especially when they are expressed in Marathi. Quite similar to how people from Karnataka would have felt while watching Stree, another movie set in the same cinematic world - which was inspired by the folk legend of "Nale Ba" or "come tomorrow".

Stree's director Amar Kaushik is one of the producers of Munjya. Kaushik had also directed Bhediya which dealt with a tale from Arunachal Pradesh. The other producer of Munjya, Dinesh Vijan, is perhaps the driving force behind Maddock Films' supernatural universe - where they take inspiration from folk tales all over India and try to weave them into an intertwining horror-comedy narrative. Roohi, for example, is based on tales from the mountainous north of India.

Munjya is a malevolent spirit, a rakshasa who is hellbent on getting what he wants even after death. In life, he was a young boy named Gotya who was obsessed with an older woman named Munni whose marriage to another age-appropriate man sent him spiraling into desperation. In the tragic events that follow, he dies within ten days of his sacred thread ceremony (or "munja" in Marathi), and is trapped in a tree on an island called Chetukwadi - forever doomed to wait for his descendents.

Bittu (Abhay Verma) gets entangled into the macabre history of Chetukwadi's "munjya" when he visits his ancestral village in the Konkan region of Maharashtra with his mother Pammi (Mona Singh) and grandmother (Suhas Joshi) to attend the engagement of his cousin Rukku (Bhagyashree Limaye). Suddenly, everyone near and dear to Bittu is dragged into a game of shadows, with a vengeful spirit that desires only one thing - a "lagin" (wedding)!

Munjya combines the good and the bad to create an experience that is mostly enjoyable. The antagonist is proudly advertised as India's first purely CGI character, which is great, but the usage of special effects is average at best. The visuals apart from that are fantastic, especially the wide views of the journey to Bittu's ancestral village. Similar is the soundtrack, very complementary to the atmosphere the movie aims to create, but taken apart by the completely unnecessary songs. Furthermore, the rule of "less is more" when it comes to creating a scary environment gets completely ignored, and the character ends up looking more ludicrous than frightening by the end. The innumerable jump scares do little to help.

What the film does get right are the character interactions, the deeply personal bond between the protagonist and his grandmother, and the quite unpredictable last quarter. Just when you feel like you can predict its end, the movie goes in a completely tangential direction that is impossible to foretell, and that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. The film's just-over-two-hour running time is perhaps its the biggest strength - Munjya never overstays its welcome at any point.

Munjya seems to have the same "almost there" feminist trappings that Stree had. It is refreshing to see a horror protagonist be a soft-spoken, shy guy who grew up around strong women - his protective but overbearing mother, his supportive grandmother, and his childhood friend who also happens to be his crush all influence him in multiple ways that show throughout the movie. His growth feels earned, which puts even more of a dampener on the next statement I'll make. Munjya jarringly shows an important female character's non-alcoholic drink get spiked with alcohol by an important male character, and it is played off for laughs, never to be mentioned again, leave alone be something he apologises to her for. It is such a tonal shift from the narrative the movie builds otherwise that it had me wondering "what the hell just happened?" for a good ten minutes.

Munjya is quite an enjoyable experience thanks to its stellar casting, which is devoid of established stars and relies instead on the individual and collaborative performances of the entire extended cast - and they don't let us down. Suhas Joshi, who plays Bittu's grandmother, is the stand-out (at least in the parts where she isn't a figment of his imagination). The lead pair of Abhay Verma and Sharvari Wagh share any significant screentime only in the last few minutes of the movie, but they both give good performances by themselves. While a complaint can be made that almost none of the characters is fully fleshed out, nobody can claim they don't have personalities - every character feels real, even the silly evangelist / healer / conman / good guy with the fantastic name of Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj)!

Munjya doesn't take itself too seriously, handing out jokes and jump scares in equal measure. If you are willing to overlook the slightly shoddy CGI and are not a fan of being genuinely scared (the kind where you look over your shoulder before going to bed), it is worth the ticket and the popcorn.