There's an obvious attempt to startle with its gruesome imagery of severed heads skewered on chopped limbs and peeled-off faces but it's too tacky to elicit any real dread, observes Sukanya Verma.
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.
Spanning through 1951 to 2025 in the fictional North Indian town of Charandaspur, the furious to-and-fro chronology highlights endless connections within events of the past and present. Everything from a nuclear plant to a wish-granting vending machine requiring a token and a thumb to do the trick, colour Mandala Murders' mind-boggling medley of daftness passed off as deception.
So there's an investigating officer harbouring deep-rooted guilt (Vaani Kapoor), a cop sulking about his comatose girlfriend and long-time missing mum (Vaibhav Raj Gupta), a cunning politician (Surveen Chawla) cashing on the sympathy of her bed-ridden, abusive husband's state, a symbol-reading specialist (Jameel Khan), a shadow worshipper (Raghubir Yadav), and a bunch of thuggish siblings living off the sacrifices of their overprotective mum along with unintentionally hilarious grandparent history thrown in the over-plotted mix.
But the show's lack of world building and unspectacular storytelling doesn't do justice to its compelling ensemble of actors.
There's an obvious attempt to startle with its gruesome imagery of severed heads skewered on chopped limbs and peeled-off faces but it's too tacky to elicit any real dread.
By the time one is through with its pile of what transpired five years ago/20 years ago/one year ago/so on and so forth, flashback fatigue wears in and still no breakthrough in sight.
What is certain is Charandaspur's resident Robert Langdon miraculously predicting what (and whose) body part will be the next casualty because every single character is conveniently connected to the mysterious Mandala symbol imprinted on the dead.
'Mandala is a geometric design which represents the cosmos,' he espouses while the deadpan cop notes how the Ayasti deity bears keen resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
The mystical side of the story drives in the point behind its 'yantra' and 'vardan' in our baloney fed heads even as Mandala Murders and its sloppy mystery refuses to take off.
If the confused premise cannot decide whether its century-old society of ritually driven women are warriors or witches, bland interactions between its numerous characters reduces them into a meandering crowd rushing towards closures and conflicts sans any feeling.
Sub-plots are developed only to be rudely forgotten as are its characters who pop in and fade out amidst unresolved objectives of this clumpy, crashing bore.
Mandala Murders streams on Netflix.
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