Okay. Wow. My screen is black and my brain is just… buzzing. It’s 1:47 AM and I feel like I just solved a crime myself. Or maybe I just witnessed one. I can’t tell. My heart is still doing that weird pitter-patter thing. I just finished Raat Akeli Hai on Netflix and I think I need to walk around my block for a bit but it’s way too dark and this movie has made me terrified of the dark. And of rich people. And of families. Especially rich families.
God, that family. THAT FAMILY. I was watching on my laptop in my dark room and I felt like I needed to take a shower after every scene they were in. The second that old guy kicked it, I was like, yep, one of you did it. Definitely. All of them are just so… slimy. The way they talk to each other, the way they look at each other when they think no one is watching. It’s all just lies layered on top of secrets. It’s insane. And I’m sitting here on my couch, wrapped in a blanket, feeling like an intruder in their gross, dusty mansion.
And then this cop shows up. Jatil. Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Seriously, the man is a god. At first, you’re looking at him and you think, “really? This is the guy who’s gonna solve this?” He’s so awkward. He’s sweating all the time. He’s trying to get married and his mom is nagging him about it on the phone while he’s standing over a dead body. It’s almost funny. But then… you see it. The way his eyes move. He’s not missing anything. He’s listening to everything. I thought I had him pegged, I really did. Just another small-town cop, maybe a little dim but with good intentions. But now that I’m typing this… was that the point? Was I supposed to underestimate him, just like the family did? Or was he genuinely just bumbling his way through it until things clicked? I don’t know. It’s messing with my head. He’s so quiet, you almost forget he’s there, which is probably how he gets away with hearing everything.
But Radha. Radhika Apte. Holy crap. She is the whole damn movie. She walks in as this young, beautiful woman who just married this old dude who immediately dies. Everyone is looking at her like she’s a gold-digging black widow. And honestly, for a minute, I did too. But there’s this one moment. Jatil is interrogating her for the first time, in this room full of vulture-like family members. And he asks her a question, and she looks at him. And it’s not a scared look. It’s not a guilty look. It’s this look of pure, unadulterated challenge. It’s like she’s saying, “I see you. I know you’re trying to figure me out. Good luck.” That one look. It completely flipped the movie on its head for me. She wasn’t a victim. She was a survivor. And I was leaning so close to my laptop screen at that point, I’m pretty sure my breath fogged up the camera.
This whole movie feels like a nightmare you have in the middle of a thunderstorm. It’s always raining. The mansion is dark and full of shadows. Everyone is whispering. I had to pause it at one point, right after Jatil finds that first clue in the shed, to go get a glass of water. And my apartment felt so quiet and normal, and walking back into that world on my screen was genuinely jarring. It’s like the movie creates its own atmosphere and just sucks you in. That’s the power of Netflix, I guess. You can just hit pause, let the dread simmer for a minute, and then dive right back in. I don’t think I would have survived this in a cinema. I needed the control. I needed to be able to pause and be like, “okay, breathe, it’s just a movie… mostly.”
It reminds me of this one time I went to a family wedding in my dad’s village. It was huge, and everyone was staying in this old, creaky house. And at night, you could hear all these arguments happening behind closed doors. You’d walk down a hallway and two people would be talking in hushed, angry tones and then they’d just stop and stare at you as you walked past. Everyone was smiling for the photos during the day, but at night… the house felt haunted by all the things people weren’t saying. This movie feels like that, but with a dead body. It’s that same feeling of a rotten core underneath a fancy exterior. Anyway, it’s not important.
The scene where Jatil is chasing one of the brothers through the sugarcane fields at night… I literally was holding my breath. The flashlight beams cutting through the dark, the sound of them running through the crops, the panic. My body was so tense. I was clenched up in a ball on my couch. It was so visceral and so real. And you know what? I was kind of rooting for the brother to get away, not because he was a good guy, but because I was just so stressed out. The movie does that to you. It makes you feel the panic.
Honestly, I thought I knew who the killer was about halfway through. I was so smug about it. I was like, “yep, it’s totally the son, he’s got the motive and he’s a weasel.” But then the movie just keeps twisting and turning, and every new piece of information made my theory look dumber and dumber. And the final reveal? It wasn’t some huge, dramatic, out-of-nowhere twist. It was quiet. It made sense. It was hiding in plain sight the whole time. And that’s so much more satisfying. It wasn’t about one person being evil. It was about a whole system of rot. A whole family complicit in their own decay.
I’m still thinking about the ending. The way Jatil looks at Radha in the car. There’s no big romantic music, no dramatic kiss. Just this quiet understanding between two people who have seen some really messed up stuff. It was perfect. It was real. Or, I don't know, maybe it was a little too low-key? Was I supposed to want more from them? I can't decide. My brain is too fried.
Okay, I need to stop. I need to watch a cat video or something to cleanse my palate. This movie is going to stick with me for a while. It’s not a fun watch, but man, it’s a good one. It’s the kind of movie that reminds you why you love storytelling. It just grabs you and doesn’t let go.
8.5/10. - solid
- Ishaan