Accused review: An intriguing concept that spills all over the place!

Anubhuti Kashyap’s Accused, starring Konkona Sen Sharma and Pratibha Ranta, is guilty of being a bare-minimum exploration of what happens when women in positions of power misuse it for personal gain.

As more women step into positions of power, conversations about the misuse of authority have naturally grown. There’s a common belief that women, who got the seat on the table, will behave differently from the men who have historically exploited systems to harm the weak and defenseless. But what we often forget is that those women operate within the same patriarchal structure that still holds strong influence. That’s exactly what Accused wants to highlight. Framed as a whodunnit thriller, the film is more about examining society and its complicated power structure than proving the accused as guilty or not!

The story opens in London, where we’re introduced to Dr. Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma), a brilliant surgeon who is known for always stepping in to save the day. She’s on the verge of becoming the dean at her hospital and is preparing to adopt a baby with her partner Meera (Pratibha Ranta), a doctor at a children’s hospital. But their seemingly perfect life is turned upside down when the hospital’s HR informs Geetika about anonymous emails accusing her of sexual harassment. Suddenly, the confident and self-assured doctor begins to appear rude, self obsessed, and possibly even guilty. As suspicion slowly starts to look like proof and half-known details turn into accepted truths, Geetika’s entire life - her past, her mistakes, her personality, her behavior and even her marriage, comes under scrutiny.

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I’m a huge fan of the “he said - she said” genre, especially when it uses the structure of a whodunnit to explore the why rather than just the who. It’s one of the most effective ways to examine something as sensitive as sexual harassment, because it shifts the focus from the act itself to the psychology and the society that allows it to happen. That’s why I was drawn to Accused. The film opens strongly as we see Geetika and Meera, two South Asian queer women, married and living in London, working in white-dominated hospitals presented without spectacle. Their existence feels matter-of-fact as the film wants us to focus on them being women, particularly Geetika.

Once accusations surface against her, everything revealed about her begins to feel like a case of character assassination. Through the voices of an ex, a jealous colleague, a younger former partner, a resentful co-worker, a white colleague competing for the same promotion, and even a trusted male friend of Meera’s, the narrative builds suspicion from every direction. Like Meera, we stand in the middle of this chaos, unsure of whom to trust. Everyone seems capable of targeting Geetika, yet Geetika herself begins behaving as if she has something to hide. It’s an effective smokescreen, blurring the line between truth and perception. After all, it’s easier for a patriarchal society to label a sharp, assertive “girl boss” as predatory than to confront its own biases.

But the film doesn’t fully develop this tension. Instead, it feels like multiple films running parallel within one narrative. In one strand, Geetika is a mad crusader fighting to prove her innocence. In another, marital tensions unfold, with lying and cheating awkwardly equated with patterns of sexual misconduct. In a third, a private investigator introduces a neutral perspective, though his eccentricity often feels tonally misplaced in an otherwise serious story. Rather than converging, these tracks drift apart and by the time the film arrives at its final revelation of the who and the why, the emotional investment feels stretched thin. The narrative pulls in too many detours that it forgets what the point was in the first place. Even the London setting feels odd and misplaced as several white supporting actors lack conviction and the backdrop begins to resemble an out-of-place NRI drama rather than an organically situated story, and the two meticulous actors can't save it from its own doom!

What’s more disappointing is Geetika’s reduction to a gender-reversal trope. She calls out a man investigating her case for bias against her as a woman, yet she herself treats other vulnerable women with resentment. Even within her age-gap marriage with her being older than her wife, power dynamics are evident. She is arrogant, evasive and often insufferable - traits that mirror the very men she claims to resist. In trying to escape patriarchal judgment, she seems to internalize it and when that realization comes, it feels less like accountability and more like a convenient sermon, something like men say to get away with things.

There is a thin line between being accused and being guilty that feels increasingly blurred today. An innocent person can be branded guilty simply through accusation, while the guilty can slip away through manipulation of narrative. In times where fiction can masquerade as fact and fact can be dismissed as fiction, and social media trials decide the verdict, a story like this film demands precision. Instead, the film feels like a carousel of talking points, raising powerful ideas but failing to bind them into a narrative. In that sense, the film Accused itself can be accused and perhaps found guilty of missing the sharp depth it so ambitiously reaches for!

Accused is currently streaming on Netflix!

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