Vikrant Massey's film is too chaotic to be a hard-hitting chronicle

It is never easy to draw a portrait of a psychopath. Sector 36inspired by the 2005-2006 Nithari murders, attempts this task without much success. The film is never as searing or disturbing as one might expect. There are several reasons for this. Directed by Aditya Nimbalkar and written by Bodhayan Roychaudhury, the Netflix film cites Newton's third law of motion – every action has an equal and opposite reaction – to explain how Prem (Vikrant Massey), a businessman's servant who delights in unrestrained slaughter, became the kind of monster he is.

In terms of basic characterization, the creation of a context for unexplained crime is passable as a narrative conceit. But as a vehicle for an in-depth investigation of an unspeakably gruesome series of murders committed over several months in a bungalow in a residential enclave in the city of New Delhi, the film lacks the necessary bite.

By providing a justification for why Prem kills the children of underprivileged migrants living in a camp opposite the luxury colony, the script softens the impact of the fictionalized re-enactment of a true crime and prevents the perpetrator from becoming a truly memorable and gruesome film character.

Prem is truly a freak, a man completely used to violence. He uses a cleaver to dismember the bodies of the boys he anally abuses and kills. And that's not all. Cannibalism comes easily to him.

But if you meet him in the market place, you might think he is a kind, smiling guy who wouldn't hurt a fly. He has a wife and a daughter in the village. Another child is on the way. But Prem is far from the kind of family man you would consider safe with a child.

He is angry at the years of poverty and the wealth he sees around him. He is particularly annoyed when contestants blow their chance to win big on a prime-time quiz show he watches regularly. He is obsessed with one day getting into the hot seat and claims he will return home with a hefty payout if he succeeds.

Prem lives and looks after a bungalow owned by Balbir Singh Bassi (Akash Khurana), a businessman from Karnal whose business dealings are as varied as they are shady. He serves his master with unwavering loyalty. He lures the children of the slum into his dark hideout and sexually exploits them before killing them and chopping them into small pieces to make the remains easier to dispose of.

Sector 36, produced by Jio Studios and Maddox Films, tells the brief backstory of a butcher uncle in whose butcher shop Prem worked and suffered as an orphan two decades ago. Given what happened there, the man believes that what he is doing to the world is a fair response to what his uncle did to him.

The “equal and opposite reaction” theory works better for Inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal), the son of a deceased mathematics and Sanskrit professor at Benaras Hindu University. He tries not to react to anything. That is his preferred defense mechanism.

Inspector Pandey runs a small police outpost with just two other policemen, plays Ravana in the local Ram Lila performance during Dussera and speaks super-chaste Hindi, to the dismay of his boss, DCP Jawahar Rastogi (Darshan Jariwala).

The inspector manages to deal with the stranglehold of the “system” by staying out of the crosshairs of his superiors and doing just enough police work to keep his job. He thrives when he's not causing trouble.

But when the evil that Prem embodies strikes and his wife gives him an ultimatum, Inspector Pandey has had enough. He puts aside his apathy and gets to work. He takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of the missing children. That is easier said than done.

The investigative work of a reformed police officer who wants to catch a cold-blooded serial killer should actually have been the stuff of a thrilling thriller. That is not the case with “Sector 36”. The film is not gripping or biting. What is going on in Prem's bungalow – and in his head – is clear from the start.

The police officer's initially reluctant and ultimately uncompromising response to the desperate cries of the helpless migrants whose children have disappeared without a trace – and to the call of duty – forms the crux of the plot. Inspector Pandey is stymied by his immediate superior, who replies that IPS stands for “In the Service of Politicians” and looks for ways to break the shackles.

When a new officer – Superintendent of Police Bhupen Saikia (Baharul Islam) – is transferred from a small town to take charge of the Sector 36 police station, Pandey is given a free hand. But that is not the end of the story.

In a long confessional where the killer explains his modus operandi in great detail, Vikrant Massey takes the opportunity to enjoy the monologue to the fullest and reach the climax of his performance. Prem boasts and preens while grinning, among other horribly twisted things, a convenient reason for the murder of a young girl – his only victim who was not a child.

Deepak Dobriyal also fills the screen with his shifty expressions of shock and amazement as Prem comes clean and confesses his diabolical misdeeds. But nothing that either actor conveys during this lengthy, pivotal sequence is the desired gut punch.

The script reduces the sequence to an encounter that borders on the comic and tends to trivialize the heinous actions of a despicable deviant. The fault therefore clearly lies much more with the script than with the actors.

Massey's interpretation of the psychotic Prem oscillates between the macabre and the light-hearted. One behavioral trait attributed to the character is a croaking cackle that he lets out when he thinks he's made a joke or stumbles upon something that amuses him.

Humor is a rather odd choice here, mainly because it is simply not dark enough. The same lax, ironic tone characterizes the character portrayed by Dobriyal. The situations that Inspector Pandey finds himself in and the jokes he makes often do not fit with the serious subject matter of the film.

He is by no means the only perpetrator in a film that is too confused to be a hard-hitting chronicle of a crime that is difficult to comprehend.