When I was in film school, we learnt about this Hollywood film called Plan 9 from Outer Space that was ridiculed for being one of the worst films ever made. The makers were even given a posthumous Golden Turkey award. I think it’s only fair that poor dead Ed Wood who made Plan 9, rises from his grave to present his award to Shirish Kunder for making Mrs Serial Killer, now streaming on Netflix.
Shirish who credits himself as the writer, editor, director and music composer deserves to be applauded. I mean how rarely do we get to see a film that is appallingly bad in every department? To add to the excitement, it’s also anti-adoption, anti-pre-marital sex, and anti-single moms. This is truly a rare gem that needs to be used as a warning for future filmmakers about just how wrong they can go.
Dr Mrityunjoy Mukherjee (Manoj Bajpayee) is a respected gynaecologist married to Sona (Jacqueline Fernandez) who also seems to teach some subject in medical school. Why she speaks with an accent or dresses like she is on vacation in Goa while living in a small hill station in Uttarakhand is not explained. When Mrityunjoy is arrested in an investigation connected to five murdered women, the small town that once revered him, turns against him overnight. When no lawyers agree to take his case, Mrityunjoy asks his wife to meet an old patient of his, Brij Rastogi (Darshan Jariwala), who happens to be a well-known lawyer.
Brij is bedridden in a room that looks like it was once a part of Hogwarts albeit with medical equipment thrown in. To complicate matters or make them more ridiculous, Sona’s ex-boyfriend Imran (Mohit Raina) steals DNA evidence from their home and plants it at the desolate building where the bodies of the five women were found to deliberately frame Mrityunjoy. When her husband’s bail gets rejected and the legal options seem to be running out, Brij suggests that they go beyond the law to get justice. Sona and Brij decide that she will commit a copycat crime while her husband is in custody to prove his innocence. But thanks to the complete lack of nuance or suspense, we know which way this story is going to end up 10 minutes into the proceedings.
The idea is interesting enough on paper. A wife deranged with grief resorts to crime to save her husband. But sadly, wrapped in Shirish’s technicolour Dreamcoat (a large part of the film has the actors lit up in bright red and green, purple and orange), Mrs Serial Killer is reduced to a screechy, inadvertent joke. While trying to find a woman to kill, Sona sits in the car dialling numbers and ends up finding the right match only to realise that the girl, Anushka Tiwari (debutante Zayn Marie Khan) is her student. She is also a blackbelt in taekwondo and frequently climbs walls as we later find out. Sona is crushed and whines about her life being unfair, but decides murder she must, because all is fair in love, and well, this film.
Instead of creating a chilling thriller where a woman starts off trying to save her husband only to discover her own murderous instincts, or introduce a dramatic twist at the end, Shirish keeps things lazy and obvious. His leading lady shrieks and heaves and keeps consulting with her lawyer on what she must do next. How she becomes okay with killing someone overnight to save a man she has obviously married on the rebound is never explained. Nor are the IV bottles that hang from the ceiling like some twisted form of mood lighting, Anushka’s hair being half purple or Brij’s wife having to drape her sari in a textbook bad cinema vamp style.
I also found Shirish using Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene background music from Psycho in between his own background score absolutely sacrilegious. Manoj Bajpayee is an extremely talented actor and perhaps the only ray of hope in this film but sadly he is relegated to the side-lines till almost the very end. With such a poor script to work with he starts hamming to keep things interesting, but sadly by then you are past caring if anyone is dead or alive.
Jacqueline should really reconsider her choice of profession. It’s unfortunate that she is expected to carry the weight of this film on her shoulders because between poor dialogue delivery and zero histrionic skills, her performance or whatever you can call it is excruciating. Mohit grimaces and grunts through the film, trying valiantly to seem invested in a role that has him pee in his ex-girlfriend’s bathroom while he collects DNA evidence and argues with her for leaving him.
What is absolutely unforgivable is the shaming of single mothers and the anti-adoption statements this film makes. The killer targets unmarried pregnant women because he was discarded by a ‘whore’ single mom and adopted by a male ‘pervert’ who sexually abused him. It’s such a dangerously simplistic way of looking at things and against all progressive thought.
I was really aghast that Netflix had allowed such content on its platform. Why and how this film even got commissioned or was allowed to stream on the platform is the real mystery here. Ironically, the best part of Mrs Serial Killer is that it is streaming on an OTT platform, so spare yourself the torture and don’t watch it.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.