Mandala Murders

While the tastemakers of Bollywood have shifted their focus to love and romance in the darkness of theatres, they continue to serve slices of the dark ages in the brightness of living rooms. What started as an avenue for experimentation, OTT content is increasingly becoming predictable and phoney. With self-censorship limiting the options for subversion, long-form content with decorative layers is becoming tiresome to watch. The latest is Yash Raj Entertainment’s largely incoherent iteration of a cult’s commitment to recreate its god out of the flesh and blood of a select group of residents in the quaint area. Someone’s murder is someone’s sacrifice. Someone’s god is someone’s demon. We get the gist, but the mood, mystery, and message take a long time to align. Created by Gopi Puthran, who, having made the chilling Mardani universe, knows more than a thing or two about telling stories of women surviving a violent, patriarchal world. Here, he puts them at the centre of conflict, but the chill feels cosmetic.

Like Khauf, Black White & Grey — Love Kills, and Black Warrant earlier this year, Mandala Murders is the kind of Hindi fiction that wouldn’t exist if not for streaming platforms. It isn’t short of ambition or scale; it’s original; it’s conceived with the rules, reach, world-building and timelines of a fantasy novel. The template of two haunted cops investigating a pattern of ritualistic murders in a mysterious town becomes a generational saga of a secret female-led cult, black magic, the fusion of science and divinity, a machine that ingests human thumbs to grant miracles, comatose girlfriends, shadow worshippers, a political rivalry, a ninja-styled and mythical killer, a Frankenstein’s-Monster-coded mission, and a lot more. In fact, 8 episodes later, I’d be hard-pressed to distil the premise into a coherent logline. When one character tells another late in the show that “the answers you seek are beyond your understanding,” I could only nod in vehement agreement. To be fair, it does this without making us feel thick.

The series opens in 1952. Villagers are set to burn what they are led to believe is an abode of witches. What these women, led by the feisty Shriya Pilgaonkar (in a cameo), are doing is another point of interest. Undeniably, the very premise is intriguing, suspenseful and supernatural. Cut to the present day. Rhea Thomas (Vaani Kapoor) is a CIB (yes, the CBI derivative) detective assigned to crack the case and sent to Charandaspur, the epicentre of mystery and murder. ‘Gullak’ fame Vaibhav Raj Gupta as Vikram Singh is a cop suspended from duty. He is back in this quaint place, which happens to be his hometown and where his mother went missing decades ago. Both find themselves in the midst of a series of bizarre murders and get together to unravel the truth behind the shocking deaths. In the latest Netflix series ‘Mandala Murders’, superstition, magic, miracle and horror (science too) collide. The very first body, of a photographer uncovering a political scam, is discovered with the torso missing. Two more have their arms undone. At one level, the series unfolds like a police procedural, at another it’s political intrigue at its vilest best. But since at the heart of the series is some unnatural phenomenon, the mystery will not be easy to unfold, and conventional answers won’t apply. Who is killing and why, the mystery deepens.

To interest the audience in an occult thriller, the ensuing mumbo jumbo and its elaborate designs must suck its beholders into its specious air of intrigue and eerie. But the pillar-to-post energy of Mandala Murders translates to eight nonsensical episodes of crackpot mythology and jumbled plotting. Sitting through this uphill task, created by Gopi Puthran of Mardaani movies fame for YRF and inspired by Mahendra Jakhar’s novel The Butcher of Benares feels all the more daunting against its commitment to gloom, which leaves no room for thrill or wonder. A dour-faced series where supernatural, science and stern faced cops collide, Mandala Murders falls in the same space as previous occult-backdrop procedurals like Asur and Dahan. Except there’s little to hold on to in its puzzle-like pursuit of a body slicing serial killer, linked to an ancient, all-women religious cult calling themselves the Ayasti, wherein a pair of cops fight their inner demons in trying to get to the root of the ritualistic killings.