The Netflix movie is as poorly handled as the police’s work on the 2006 Nithari serial murders that it’s based on.
Akhil Arora, a Film Critics Guild member and a Rotten Tomatoes-certified film critic, who saw Sector 36 in 4K Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos. He has been reviewing movies and TV series since 2015 and has written for NDTV and SlashFilm.
How do you approach a movie inspired by a series of gruesome killings that left a scar on the public but provided no closure? The police investigation into the 2006 Nithari serial murders—where a domestic help preyed on at least 19 minors, sexually assaulting them after their death, chopping their bodies into pieces and possibly indulging in cannibalism and organ harvesting, potentially with the tacit acknowledgement of his employer—was so badly botched that the case remains in the news in 2024, as the courts and agencies debate the sentencing. The two main accused were acquitted in 2023 over lack of sufficient evidence but India’s top crime body, CBI, has challenged it. With so many unknowable factors, this is rich territory for any filmmaker.
Sector 36 is rudderless and ill-thought-out
But alarmingly and somewhat poetically, Sector 36—directed and written by debutants Aditya Nimbalkar and Bodhayan Roychaudhury, respectively—botches virtually every aspect available to it. For one, the Netflix movie cannot figure out what it wants to be. Is it primarily a psychological crime drama centred on a demented killer? Vikrant Massey’s casting (and the places he goes to) sure suggests it’s interested in that space. Is it a police procedural with a redemption arc for a corrupt, apathetic cop? Alas, Deepak Dobriyal’s sub-inspector isn’t quite the dogged underachiever as Kohrra’s SI Balbir Singh. Or is it, first and foremost, meant to be an attempt at social commentary about how the lives of India’s poor have no value? Except, just like the killer, Sector 36 doesn’t care about the victims or their families.
But all of that is overshadowed by the film’s biggest issue. Despite a goldmine of possibilities, Sector 36 is startingly inert from start to finish. This isn’t a tight two-hour film. This is a feature-length movie that could’ve wrapped up its narrative in a 20-minute short. It’s so rudderless and ill-thought-out that it wastes most of its runtime on scenes that do nothing to advance the story, momentum, or its principal characters. It just meanders. You could cut out the first 30 minutes and you would hardly lose anything. Sector 36’s cop protagonist bumbles across the film—he doesn’t have any inkling of what an investigation involves, he ignores key suspects for long stretches, and material evidence literally falls into his lap more than once. It’s mind-bogglingly maddening.
The plot of Sector 36
Set in late 2005 Delhi—it’s a tad curious why the Netflix film moves out of the jurisdiction of the Noida Police—Sector 36 spends its opening act establishing its two leads. Prem Singh (Massey) works as the live-in domestic help for Balbir Singh Bassi (Akash Khurana), a rich businessman who has friends in high places. He’s frequently away from home but when Bassi does remain in Delhi, he loves to host sex workers and record their escapades. Prem is naturally not invited so the egoistic fellow has been operating his own business on the sidelines to satisfy his urges. He regularly kidnaps young kids from the neighbourhood and has his way with them, knowing all too well that the inept police cannot be bothered to help the underprivileged.
Speaking of the police, Sector 36’s other lead character is Ram Charan Pandey (Dobriyal), a corrupt cop who claims he can’t take on any cases as he’s severely understaffed. The truth is he doesn’t care. All that changes on the night of Dussehra after Prem tries—and fails—to kidnap Ram Charan’s own daughter. (It’s a massive divergence from Prem’s modus operandi and reeks of writer’s convenience. It disappoints on a technical level, too, as the Netflix movie cannot deliver on a simple chase scene between its two leads.) Still, it provides the narrative push that Sector 36 lacks for the opening half hour, where the film feels aimless and has no idea of what it’s building to. It’s just gratuitous or psychological violence. Do you know what you’re doing?
The most clueless police investigation ever
Alas, that special period only lasts for a few minutes. Just as Ram Charan, Sector 36 has no clue what it takes to build a convincing police investigation. The Netflix movie delivers one listless scene after another—there’s a confrontation that paints the families of the victims in a terrible light which the film uses to cast all of them aside. There’s a minor subplot involving the kidnapping of a boy from a rich family that delivers entirely on-the-nose commentary. A crucial piece of evidence somehow makes its way into the hands of a clueless Ram Charan. That leads to a confession and Ram Charan’s suspension, which only lasts until the night of Diwali (that’s less than two weeks), when he’s reminded of a suspect whom he had never even thought about. The film and the cop both stumble through it all. We’re operating on zero evidence, all vibes here.
And then, virtually out of the blue, Sector 36 drops us into another confession scene. It feels jarring and abrupt as the Netflix movie has done nothing to give us the building blocks that you would have in a proper police procedural. In fact, Sector 36 is missing so many scenes that could help you connect the dots. But elsewhere, it willingly wastes time giving you introductory scenes for immaterial characters.
This is ultimately down to lacklustre and uncontrolled direction. It’s why actors are doing their own thing and even scenes that are potentially going somewhere eventually derail. Massey shifts into another universe in the second half in what feels like an on-the-spot move from the actor to do something that has no correlation to the rest of his performance in Sector 36. That also explains the music-led montage with on-screen text in the final third. It’s an aesthetic that had never been previously established and is never used again.
Sector 36 is among Netflix’s worst Indian movies of all time
The Netflix film’s last half hour is so all over the place that it’s impossible to ascertain what it’s trying to say. If anything. After the investigation solves itself, Sector 36 pulls on several half-baked threads that are either unsatisfying or egregious. The privileged predictably escape justice in unceremonious fashion, the dismissed cop coaxes the primary accused to lead him to evidence that undercuts the flow, and the movie begins thinking beyond itself as the ending ditches its leads and lays the groundwork for a sequel. Imagine not being able to deliver a single good sequence and having the audacity to ask for an entire new movie. One that will follow up on the horror you’ve created and centre on minor characters that you’d more or less ignored.
It’s at times like these you start asking yourself questions like: Did Netflix pick up Sector 36 purely to stay in business with its producers? Or because it needed something to occupy the month of September? And how low would this rank among the movies Netflix’s India division has given us in its torturous six years of original output?
Sector 36 released on Friday, September 13 on Netflix worldwide.
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