Netflix’s latest original film Sector 36 is loosely based on the 2006 Nithari killings, where Vikrant Massey plays to chilling perfection a serial killer while Deepak Dobriyal brings to life a cop on the hunt. Despite its solid premise, the Aditya Nimbalkar-directed film is too disjointed to deliver the kind of gut punch you’d expect from it.
Nimbalkar quickly immerses you in an unsettling narrative. We are taken into the drawing room of a sprawling bungalow where a young man in a fancy bathrobe is watching a Kaun Banega Crorepati-like game show. Just when you start to sense something is off, the camera moves into the bathroom where a young girl is lying dead. The man picks up a butcher knife and starts hacking her — the first of many graphic images that leaves you squirming.
We are then told that the killer is Prem (Vikrant Massey), the caretaker of a bungalow owned by a shady businessman Mr Bassi (Akash Khurana). When the landlord is away, Prem revels in unthinkable acts of violence — sodomising, butchering, and even cannibalising young children whom he kidnaps from a nearby slum.
Enter Inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal), a world-weary cop who prefers to stay on the sidelines, avoiding trouble and adhering to the system. When Prem makes a failed attempt at kidnapping Pandey’s daughter, the cop is shaken out of his stupor to find the criminal and bring him to book. The cat-and-mouse chase that begins then doesn’t last long as Prem is nabbed very easily by Pandey.
We get a peek at Prem’s backstory. He was abused by his uncle and growing up in a butcher shop, the sight of blood and savagery desensitised him to violence.
Massey’s portrayal of Prem swings between the macabre and the absurd, with a nervous, croaky cackle that punctuates many of the scenes. He makes for a good enough chilling villain but the script doesn’t have enough scope for him to dive into the depths of his character’s darkness. His long monologue in the climactic confessional scene is a case in point. Prem describes his crimes in graphic detail and brags, but the sequence feels more theatrical than gut-wrenching.
Deepak Dobriyal as Inspector Ram Charan Pandey provides the film with a much-needed anchor. Dobriyal plays Pandey with a subtle charm, often slipping in wry humour and quiet moments of reflection. But like Massey, he’s constrained by a script that fails to hit the right emotional notes.
The film’s tagline — every action has an equal and opposite reaction — tries to explain Prem’s violent tendencies through Newton’s third law of motion, which looks like a justification of his crimes and just doesn’t feel right.
What Sector 36 gets right is the mood building: be it the eerie bungalow where Prem lives, or Man Kyun Behka playing on the tape recorder as Prem goes about butchering his victims. The mid 2000s timeline is also recreated well — Prem loves to watch Sab Banenge Crorepati (a fictionalised version of Kaun Banega Crorepati) on TV and uses a Nokia phone.
Sector 36 touches upon the power inequality at play. When masked assailants kidnap the son of a rich industrialist, the police spring into action but the same cops refuse to lodge an FIR even as children are reported missing from the slum.
Sourabh Goswami’s camera work ensures that the film’s visual style is gripping even when the narrative falters. The background score and songs — including Dumroo by Mohit Chauhan and Anupam Amod, and Saaya by Kanishk Seth — add to the mood.
