This is an archive article published on September 18, 2024
Sector 36: Does Vikrant Massey’s exploitative Netflix movie really expect us to nod in agreement with a serial killer?
Post Credits Scene: Starring Deepak Dobriyal and Vikrant Massey, the exploitative Sector 36 reduces a real-life horror story to a cat-and-mouse chase between two thinly written characters on either side of the law.
When people complain about the Indian streaming industry relying too heavily on violence and gore, they’re probably talking about stuff like Sector 36 — the new crime-thriller on Netflix that reduces a real-life horror story to a cat-and-mouse chase between two thinly written characters on either side of the law. The reluctant cop is played by Deepak Dobriyal, while Vikrant Masseygets top-billing the serial killer trying to evade his capture. They’re put on collision course by a movie that routinely favours contrivance over cleverness, virtue-signalling over sensitivity.
In the film’s centrepiece interrogation scene, modelled perhaps on the one featuring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat, Massey’s character makes repeated references to necrophilia, child abuse, and cannibalism. But this isn’t the problem. Sector 36 is, after all, a movie about the infamous Nithari case from a couple of decades ago. But it becomes a problem precisely because the movie has no idea how to approach the story with nuance. It chooses, instead, to take the tone of a late night television newscast, drawing large circles around the most scandalous aspects of the terrible case while ignoring the very real human tragedy at its centre. It is in the same interrogation scene, for instance, that Sector 36 makes its most head-scratching creative decision, one that perfectly captures its skewed perspective and flimsy grasp of character. But let’s build towards it, shall we?
Deepak Dobriyal as Ram Charan Pandey in Sector 36.
The first sign of trouble emerges when the movie decides to introduce its protagonist, the police officer Ram Charan Pandey, as a properly corrupt man who has no interest in doing his job. It is because of his laziness that a killer like Prem has been allowed to roam free for years. The issue isn’t that Pandey is corrupt; cops can be corrupt in cinema, just as they can be virtuous. The issue is that the movie chooses Pandey, of all people, as the vessel through whom it communicates its frustrations about how overworked the police in our country are. His excuse for not registering a single FIR, even as girls go missing under his nose, is that there are only three cops in a jurisdiction of 1.5 lakh people. That’s 50,000 people per cop, he tells a grieving father, whom he had previously bribed to not register an official complaint about his missing child.
This would’ve made sense had Pandey been up to his neck in work, juggling between a dozen cases that he was determined to solve. But the movie had already established him to be a shirker; someone who routinely buries leads, blames others, and palms off responsibility. The only reason he begins to investigate the case at all — this is after the killer has already made himself known to him, by the way — is because his own daughter was made a victim of an attempted kidnapping. This harebrained scene happens 60 seconds after the father that Pandey had been ignoring tells him, “Khud ki beti jayegi toh pata chalega (You’ll understand what I’m going through only when you lose your own daughter).” Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens.
Another complete coincidence leads him to suspecting Prem, by the way. Pandey isn’t a great investigator; in fact, in another movie, he’d be fired for being so poor at his job. It is only when evidence — a bedazzled mobile phone — literally falls into his lap that he shows up at the doorstep of the creepy businessman Bassi, at whose sprawling mansion Prem has been secretly committing his heinous crimes. Sector 36 attempts to make statements about the class-divide by showing us just how differently Bassi and Prem are treated after bodies are found in a ditch near their house. It also has the audacity to shoehorn in a subplot about the kidnapping of a rich businessman’s son, who is rescued safely within 48 hours of his disappearance. It takes this detour only to make an on-the-nose point.
But what truly takes the cake is that questionable interrogation scene. It’s not just that Prem transforms into a whole different person as he sits across from a stunned Pandey and confesses his crimes. It’s what he says. After describing in great detail what he did to all those missing kids, he proceeds to justify his actions by suggesting that he was doing them a favour; giving their worthless lives some meaning. Prem rants about how society ignores the underprivileged, whom he says are destined to die undignified deaths after spending entire lifetimes doing undignified jobs. And all that you, as a viewer, can wonder in a moment like this is: “Does this movie really want me to nod in agreement with a monster?”
Could Nimbalkar not have chosen a better mouthpiece through whom to make these rather sane points? Did he have to assign this speech to a cannibal slash rapist slash murderer? Unlike, say, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, who was a social outcast himself, and therefore justified in speaking up for people like himself, Prem isn’t at the bottom of the food chain. He has a cushy job, lives in a large house, has a loving wife and a boss who takes care of him. He certainly doesn’t view himself as a member of the same class of people that he was preying on; he believes he’s superior. But the movie doesn’t seem to be interested in unpacking these nuances. It goes for the shock-and-awe approach, aided as it is by Massey’s performance-with-a-capital-P.
Does Sector 36 want to be a socially conscious drama in the vein of Article 15, or is it vying for true crime levels of popularity? Does it really want to shed light on class inequality, or is it more interested in baiting a sequel of some kind? The answer lies in that interrogation scene. But if you aren’t convinced, there’s further evidence of its exploitation, when, after completely ignoring the parents of the murdered children, it chooses to end on a random side character who is suddenly elevated to the level of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Dark Knight Rises. What are his motivations now? Does he even care about delivering justice to the grieving parents, or is he simply disgruntled about being overlooked for a promotion? This is hardly the note that a movie about Nithari should’ve ended on.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
Rohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He covers pop-culture across formats and mediums. He is a 'Rotten Tomatoes-approved' critic and a member of the Film Critics Guild of India. He previously worked with the Hindustan Times, where he wrote hundreds of film and television reviews, produced videos, and interviewed the biggest names in Indian and international cinema. At the Express, he writes a column titled Post Credits Scene, and has hosted a podcast called Movie Police.
You can find him on X at @RohanNaahar, and write to him at rohan.naahar@indianexpress.com. He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. ... Read More
Deepak Dobriyal as Ram Charan Pandey in Sector 36.
Sector 36. Vikrant Massey as Prem in Sector 36.
Deepak Dobriyal and Vikrant Massey star in Netflix's Sector 36.