Murderbaad Movie Review: Sharib Hashmi, Amole Gupte Shine In This Layered But Overly Ambitious Whodunit Film

News18

19-07-2025

Murderbaad is not for everyone. It's too quiet for those expecting fireworks. But actors Nakul Roshan Sahdev, Sharib Hashmi, Manish Chaudhari and Amole Gupte shine.
Murderbaad Movie Review: Murderbaad is a rather unique watch. It takes a thriller, a rather familiar territory for us, but what the maker does with it is almost worth watching out for. Arnab Chatterjee, who writes, directs, and produces, takes a psychological thriller and quietly rewires it into something darker and far more unnerving, dismantling the genre piece by piece. Arnab may be all of 24 but he doesn't need you to cut him any slack or go easy on him as it turns out to be a surprisingly layered whodunit, offering an intriguing mix of romance, mystery and suspense.
The film begins in Jaipur and revolves around the story of Jayesh (Nakul Roshan Sahdev), a soft-spoken tour guide who has recently moved to Rajasthan. During one of his guided trips, he strikes up a romance with Isabelle (Kanikka Kapur), an NRI visiting India for the first time. But just when you're tricked into thinking that it's a love story, a fellow tourist from the same group disappears. Suddenly, Jayesh finds himself entangled in a web of doubt. And that sets the mood and the tonality of the rest of the narrative.
But that's exactly when the screenplay starts wobbling a bit. While Murderbaad starts out promisingly, it falters under the weight of its own ambition. What follows is not a traditional mystery and certainly not a neat one. Murderbaad is more interested in mood than momentum, more in implication than exposition. The investigation unfolds only as scaffolding. What Arnab is really exploring is rot – social, psychological and emotional.
Characters move from Jaipur to North Bengal, a lesser-exposed milieu in mainstream Bollywood, but never truly escape the moral deadness that surrounds them. Visually, the film is striking. Veteran cinematographer Binod Pradhan's camerawork aptly captures the grime. He shoots Rajasthan and West Bengal with a keen eye and plays around with harsh light and hard shadows. There's an authentic quality to the frame wherein clothes look lived-in, walls peeled and rooms smell musty.
At 143 minutes, the editing appears to resist the temptation to rush. There are long silences and withheld payoffs. The action, choreographed by another veteran Sham Kaushal, is brutal and effective. The performances are uniformly strong. Nakul brings a vulnerability that is palpable. Sharib Hashmi, as the morally compromised Maqsood, is impressive in a never-seen-before avatar. Manish Chaudhari plays Inspector Maheshwari without the usual cop theatrics. And Amole Gupte, who appears much later, is genuinely disturbing.
The film's most surprising decision is its third-act detour, which marks a sudden shift into Bengali terrain, introducing a new character and a new emotional range. It's a gamble and that lands. The personal becomes political and that in turn becomes mythic. Murdabaad is not for everyone. It's too bleak for comfort viewing, too quiet for those expecting fireworks. It is subtle. Its violence is not flashy or for gore. Its horror is existential. It cleverly manipulates memory and stores nightmares.
Arnab's Murderbaad catches you off-guard at a time when increasingly algorithmic cinema is available in surplus. But it's a long wait till that final shock in its last few moments unravel. It's an honest attempt – one that could have soared much higher with a crisper, fast-paced storytelling. Go for it if you love thrillers and are looking for a slow-burning, nuanced experience!
First Published:
July 19, 2025, 10:48 IST
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