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 Street 2, and Sarpotdar’s Munjya—that just doesn’t work as a standalone piece. At the end of its 149 minutes, very little has actually transpired. A plot-only supercut of the film wouldn't last a minute.

Thamma opens with a bright comic idea: Alexander on the march in an Indian jungle in 323 BC. One of the legends about the Greek emperor’s death has him dying of malaria; here, his fate is (presumably) sealed by a different kind of bloodsucker: a vampire named Yakshasan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). In the present day, a reporter from Delhi, Alok (Ayushmann Khurrana), is chased by an angry bear in the same forest (in wolfVarun Dhawan was chased by a wolf). He manages to crawl out of harm’s way before he passes out.

In Maddock’s horror comedies, the men are inept and silly and the women competent and driven. This is a dynamic that’s worked since the golden age of screwball, and Thamma doesn’t mess with it. When Alok comes to, he finds he’s been taken in by Tadaka (Rashmika Mandanna), a local woman hopelessly fascinated by him. He falls for her too, willfully ignoring signs of her otherworldliness. Though leaving the forest is forbidden by her pay tribe, she follows him back to the city. There’s some teeth-gnashing comedy involving Alok’s dad (Paresh Rawal, not a good fit) before the film does the two things it must: have him realise she’s a vampire, and make him one as well.

Niren Bhatt, writing with Suresh Mathew and Arun Falara, tries to match his jaunty tone from wolf and Street 2, but this film feels more effortful. Basic jokes, like Tadaka’s refusal to eat vegetarian food, are stretched until they sag. A protracted scene involving a comic occultist played by Sathyaraj never takes offf, and the franchise-linking set piece that follows is underwritten and overblown. The earlier films managed to be about something: wolf's environmental concerns, Stree's sly attacks on patriarchy. Thammathough, has little on its mind, referencing the freedom movement but without any conviction.

Thamma’s biggest problem is bad timing. It just so happens that the best Indian popular film this year is also about vampires as ageless protectors. Thamma releasing two months after Lokah is brutal, because the Malayalam film is similar enough to invite comparisons but immeasurably cooler and smarter. The yakshini mythos that’s presented with simple emotional force in Lokah is sketched confusedly here. The Hindi film has thrice the budget, but looks tacky when placed next to the precise effects of Lokah. When Chandra leaps into the sky, it’s a jolt and a thrill; when Tadaka does the same, it has no personality.

Nothing exposes the film’s timidity more than its use of Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The actor hasn’t been in good films—or been very good himself—these past few years. He’s alive and kicking here, though, a manic comic turn that’s the most exciting thing in the film. Yakshasan's speech is peppered with English phrases (“can’t you see, I want to break free") because he killed many Britishers back in the day—a detail that would’ve been even funnier had his English been period- and country-appropriate. Yet, Yakshasan, the most powerful payspends most of the film chained up and ranting in a dark cave. By the time he’s unleashed, things are wrapping up.

Thamma lacks the talented bench and pace of the Amar Kaushik films. Sarpotdar seems afraid to ruin what’s been an almost perfect run. If Street 2 indicated a franchise no longer in the first flush of youth, Thamma is its first creative crisis. The film keeps baring its teeth but never once draws blood.