New Delhi, Oct. 21 -- One of several things franchise filmmaking has taken from us is the satisfaction of seeing entire stories play out. When you always have one eye on the future, and when you aren't sure which parts of your current project viewers will take to, the easiest thing is to keep all options open. Decision-making is replaced by decision-deferring and the audience is stuck in storytelling hell.

Is Thamma half a story? A third? Aditya Sarpotdar's film is a strange beast, lurching forward, standing around uncertainly, stumbling back. This is the first entry in the Maddock horror universe-which includes Amar Kaushik's Stree, Bhediya and Stree 2, and Sarpotdar's Munjya-that just doesn't work as a standalone piece. At the end of i...