SECTOR 36 – Could Have Been Stronger

Aditya Nimbalkar makes his directorial debut with a very challenging subject. Sector 36 is sandwiched somewhere between a psychological thriller and a police thriller. The challenge is further sharpened by the fact that the film is an adaptation of the brutal Nithari killings in Noida in 2005 when 36 small children from a neighbouring slum were lured to the house of a businessman and he, along with his sociopath servant, would not only slaughter the kids to death but would also cook them on a specially made oven and eat their flesh. The tragic outcome of the final verdict in the case was that both the rich businessman and his servant were acquitted of all the crimes for lack of proper evidence! Or was it because the kids came from the slums from families who lived below the poverty line and had no clue how to get the killers sentenced for life or to death? No one knows and now, no one ever will.

The local police inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal) takes charge of the investigation, not really interested in trying to catch the killer/s because, like his colleagues in the force –is disinterested and interested only in commanding his juniors to remind them who is boss. The film does not acquire the definition of a police thriller till we are half-way through the killings of slum kids who go missing and never come back. But he pulls up his socks when, during a Ram Leela jatra in the locality where he is perhaps portraying Ravana, he witnesses his little daughter being carried away by a masked man. Pandey gives hot chase but the killer runs free. Later, the kid is rescued and brought to her mother.

Prem (Vikrant Massey) is a servant at the home of Balbir Bassi (Akash Khurana), a rich businessman with shady deals and powerful enough to wrap DCP Rastogi (Darshan Jariwalla) round his fat little finger. Prem is a psychopath who is full of so much confidence that he quite plainly narrates his entire series of killings of small children, chopping their bodies, allowing the blood to flow and then, reports that he cooked and consumed them as his abusive uncle had taught him the taste of human flesh enough for him to get addicted.

The psychological tensions come across in scenes of the killings followed by suggestions that Prem is cooking and consuming them, gruesome enough for the lay viewer to take this for a horror film with so much blood, so many pictures of missing children stuck on the walls of the slum, the policeman cringing while crushing a cockroach with his shoe but doing it nevertheless and finally, building up everything to lead to a sad and unexpected anti-climax.

Sector 36 disproves the theory that the whole is more than the sum of its parts because in this film, with an ending that does not justify the build-up is quite disappointing. Vikrant Massey’s nonchalant approach to his killings, his kidnapping of the slum kids with chocolates, defines him as the most cold-blooded and pathological serial killer one has seen in recent times. But the tragic back story of the sexual abuse by an uncle weakens his villainy. The young sex worker who is killed and buried in some garden is another bright spot in all that blood and gore.

Deepak Dobriyal, underutilised, is understated and evolving from beginning to end till he goes missing. Akash Khurana and Darshan Jariwalla are as good as they always are. The editing is sharp, jet-paced and the cinematography captures the narrow bylanes of Delhi, the Ram Leela performance-to-be and the spacious interiors of Bassi’s palatial home standing in contrast to the place where Prem does his killings offers a good contrast but also adds to the confusion about the location where the heinous crimes are actually committed. The music is quite effective but it was not really needed.

Sector 36 is a sharp, well-etched, character-driven story where the police thriller and the psychological thriller come together to make for an unhappy marriage.

(The writer is a veteran journalist based in Kolkata. Views personal.)