It's Tabu's world, we're just living in it.

Long delayed sequels are apparently a thing in movies nowadays, both in India and the West.  But sequels vary; Bunty Aur Babli 2, for instance, was a very direct sequel with close ties to the original film, but Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (2022) is a sequel in the traditional Bollywood sense, sharing at least one cast member, a few character names, and some broad thematic similarities with the original Bhool Bhulaiyaa, but remaining very much his own thing.

Ruhaan (Kartik Aaryan), a charming young man and enthusiastic traveler, meets Reet (Kiara Advani) at a ski resort.  Reet is engaged to Sagar (Sparsh Walla), though she's not very enthusiastic about the match, and she's on her way home to Rajahstan to get married.  Ruhaan convinces her to visit a local music festival and catch a later bus.

And it's a good thing she did, because while catching that later bus they learn that the original bus tumbled off a cliff, killing everybody onboard.  Reet calls home using Ruhaan's phone, but before she can talk to anyone, she overhears her sister Trisha (Mehak Manwani) telling Sagar that she had been praying for the wedding to be cancelled so that they could be together, but not like this!

So, the fiance who Reet isn't that interested in is in love with her sister.  Reet's father (Milind Gunaji) is stern and traditional and would never accept a substitute bride scenario, so Reet decides to stay dead in order to protect her sister's happiness.  (This is a fairly terrible plan, but that's Bollywood tradition.)

Reet convinces Ruhaan to accompany her to Rajahstan and they hide out in her family's abandoned mansion, but Chote Pandit (Rajpal Yadav), one of the local comic relief priests, notices that the lights are on, so the entire family leaves Reet's funeral and goes to investigate.  Ruhaan is spotted, but he quickly spins a story about being a medium led to the house by Reet's spirit, which will only be able to achieve salvation if the family all move into the mansion together, and if Trisha marries Sagar in her place.  Reet had told him just enough about the mansion and her family to make in convincing, so they accept Ruuhan as an intermediary, and everybody movies in and starts planning the wedding.

The problem is, the mansion really is haunted; Reet's sister-in-law Anjulika (Tabu) had an identical twin, Manjulika, who was consumed by jealousy and turned to black magic.  Manjulika tried to kill Anjulika on her wedding night, but ended up dying herself, and after a ghostly rampage her spirit was confined to a room on the third floor which must never be opened under any circumstances.

 And then Chote spots Ruhaan with Reet, and brings a mob of villagers to search the mansion and prove that Reet is really alive and Ruhaan is lying to everyone.  There's only one place to hide that the villagers definitely will not search, and Reet doesn't believe in the ghost anyway.  What could possibly go wrong?

The original Bhool Bhulaiyaa played coy about whether or not its ghost was real, but the ghost in Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 is definitely real.  She is played by Tabu, so she's also spectacular.  Tabu steals the show with a pair of fine performances, but then that's pretty much what Tabu does these days: she steals shows with fine performances.

Both the Bhool Bhulaiyaas are horror comedies with a (possible) ghost haunting a mansion and threatening to derail a wedding after being released from a forbidden room.  The movies rhyme, with music and other motifs from the first movie reappearing in the second, most notably a frenzied kathak in which secrets are revealed, but while the these are similar, the two films spin them in different directions.  That's enough to make this one of the most satisfying sequels I've seen in a long time.