Raat Akeli Hai 2 review: A well-made crime thriller that revels in the details!

Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders is a carefully crafted crime thriller that makes you love the devil in the details, whether in how they lead to the killer or in how they quietly unveil the film’s social commentary!

It’s a curious coincidence that within the span of a month, just days apart two whodunnits have been released - Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders. Whether this is merely a happy accident or something more, both make for an intriguing study in the art of storytelling. What’s at stake here is the theatricality of storytelling, not of the films or the plot, but the essence of telling a story itself! Whether it is designed to convincingly sell a narrative best suitable, or it's all about a profound truth that can only be told through storytelling. While Knives Out 3 is a more direct mystery tussling with faith, Raat Akeli Hai 2 chooses to bury its social commentary beneath layers of an intriguing crime thriller. After all, the devil always lies in the details, only if one is attentive enough to look for them!

Continuing the arc of Inspector Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) from the previous film, this new case gives him another mystery to sink his teeth into. It begins with an unsettling incident of crows found dead at the back of the Bansal mansion, almost as if they were a warning of impending doom. Exactly 24 hours later, five members of the Bansal household are brutally massacred in the dead of night. What initially appears to be a straightforward case of a drug addict going on a murderous rampage, evoking echoes of the Burari Murders, soon reveals itself to be far more complex. After all, when Yadav is called in, there are always shadows hiding in plain sight. As he begins to uncover them, he finds himself entangled in a web of competing narratives and half-truths. And perhaps that’s no surprise, given that the Bansals in the film are among the loudest voices in Indian journalism, experts at screaming to make it sound like truth, whether it actually is or not is debatable. 

Also Read: Mrs. Deshpande review: Madhuri Dixit’s layered performance elevates this gripping psychological thriller!

If one approaches the film purely as a surface-level whodunnit crime thriller, it delivers a compelling chase through a range of suspects that goes from two impoverished men paid to commit the crime; a troubled, addicted young man desperate for freedom; a grieving mother, Meera (Chitrangada Singh), a shrewd marketing woman once the shining face of the Bansals’ media empire; a Guru Maa (Deepti Naval) who held the family firmly in her grip; and, of course, the family’s arch-nemesis Prabhat (Sanjay Kapoor), the one who got away now running his own media company, Newrise. Each thread connects seamlessly to the next, culminating in the revelation of the real killer and a truth that reflects our times where revenge is not just a dish best served cold, but often romanticised as a necessary act of justice.

But if you are anything like Inspector Jatil Yadav himself, someone who looks beyond what meets the eye, then the film reveals a more unsettling narrative. As Yadav digs into the case, the investigation unearths another buried story of a factory emitting poisonous gas that led to the deaths of several children. Gradually, the crime thriller opens into a broader portrait of the country we live in today, where narratives are moulded to suit convenient truths, the fourth pillar of democracy is consumed by noise and distraction, faith tussles between genuine belonging and blind worship, and capitalism reduces the majority to expendable pawns of the powerful few. In this world, some lives are bulldozed into invisibility, while dividing lines are not merely drawn, but deliberately built. 

But the dividing lines we draw are often imaginary, even as the consequences of our actions are very real and inescapable. It’s this idea that director Honey Trehan and writer Smita Singh once again explore through a moody crime thriller that follows the familiar contours of the genre while subtly embedding the social atmosphere it inhabits. As Yadav’s pursuit of the truth unfolds, convincingly carried by Nawazuddin Siddqui, it continually intersects with his interactions with his mother (Ila Arun), who often holds opposing views; his love interest, played by Radhika Apte; and his newfound ally, Dr Panicker (Revathi). This grounds the already rooted investigation in lived experience, making it easy to forget that you’re watching fiction. Then, the lines between fact and fiction don’t merely blur, they merge, arriving at a profound truth that only storytelling can reveal. And for that, I love Raat Akeli Hai’s Knives Out–style pursuit of a gospel truth in an era defined by endlessly spinning narratives all around us.

Raat Akeli Hai 2 is now streaming on Netflix!

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