Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Review

In 2020, when OTT, courtesy of the pandemic, was fast laying base in our viewing habits, Raat Akeli Hai was a pulpy find. After his gangster role in Sacred Games (2018-19), Nawazuddin Siddiqui was taking up cop duties. Joining him was the “Netflix girl” Radhika Apte, playing a resilient woman who is misread as a femme fatale. The setting was classic Poirot: the head of a family is killed and all the members had a motive to murder. Raat Akeli Hai was a closed-circle mystery with a Chinatown-style reveal that also served as a commentary on the evils of patriarchy. It was a complete film in itself. So, when Netflix, earlier this year, announced a “new chapter” in the “movie franchise”, it seemed like it's fetching an old cash-cow to milk. Thankfully, that’s not all of it. Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders can stand on its own, although its legs might be wobbly.

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Chitrangada Singh, Revathy, Rajat Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Ila Arun and Radhika Apte

Directed by: Honey Trehan

Written by: Smita Singh

Streaming on: Netflix

After a murder of crows at the house of media-barons the Bansals, tough-cop Jatil Yadav is summoned. The birds are found lying lifeless around a pig-head placed on a newspaper. The family cries black magic and accuses their estranged cousin Rajesh (Sanjay Kapoor), who runs a TV channel, of attempting to usurp their empire. The Bansals themselves are under the spell of Guru Maa (Deepti Naval in her bald, cult-queen avatar), a godwoman who speaks in ominous riddles. Think Pankaj Tripathi’s Guriji from Sacred Games (film’s writer Smita Singh also worked on the crime series).

Soon, just like the crows, the Bansals too are found slaughtered, Amityville-horror style, inside their bungalow. Each member of the family is found at different places in the house with their faces covered with a white cloth and their throats slit with a machete (A journalist asks cops if there are any similarities with the Burari case). The main survivor is Meera (Chitrangada Singh) and the sole suspect is Aarav Bansal (Delzad Hiwale), the black sheep of the Bansal household, a drug addict who was kept locked in a room by the family. The theory is that Aarav, in a fit of cocaine-infused rage, sliced the throats of his kin and died, during a tussle with a survivor, after falling into a pool. The case seems open-and-shut.

But Jatil Yadav won’t have it. Like a self-respecting cop in cinema, if not suspended he can atleast be insubordinate and investigate the case on his own. His snooping reveals that Meera’s young son passed away a few years ago under mysterious circumstances and that thousands of crores have been contributed by the Bansals towards Gurumaa’s charity. There is also a school in the slum behind Bansals’ bungalow, where, some years back, children died from asphyxiation from a gas leak from a manhole.

Writer Smita Singh and director Honey Trehan set up the cards well. You get engrossed in witnessing how the pieces will align to make a clear picture. As a whodunnit, Raat Akeli Hai ably executes the elements of the genre. It keeps you guessing as Jatil tries to join the dots and unravel the mystery. Nawazuddin easily gets back into the shoes of Jatil. His bickering with his liberal mother (played by Ila Arun) is still as enjoyable. A new addition is Revathy, as a hard-nosed forensic expert. There is a scene where she demonstrates how the multiple murders were executed. There is a certain subdued comicality in her performance which allays the effect of the gruesome details we are being informed of. Her character brings fresh energy and I would love to see a spin-off.

The other characters though don’t get enough time to bake. The victims aren’t fully-formed (I am still unclear on the family tree of the Bansals). Chitrangada’s Meera could have been more multi-dimensional than she is. Rajat Kapoor as the DGP and Jatil’s superior seems like he is doing the same old boss-act, which the actor can now sleepwalk through. Radhika Apte’s Radha makes a comeback but her romance with Jatil is also brushed past quickly. She serves more as a nostalgia-bait than a fleshed-out character.

Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders delves into the theme of the rich and poor divide. There are mentions of "bulldozer", illegal slums and a politically-charged visual of a child breathing through an oxygen cylinder. But the mystery fails to hold up and all of this feels force-fitted to add some weightage to the final reveal. The film isn’t as sharp as its predecessor and feels more assembled than dexterously executed. A murder-mystery is a dish which should simmer enough for the flavour to seep in. This one is too quick off the stove.