Why “Murder in the Hills” is a major disappointment
Directed by: Anjan Dutt
Writer: Anjan Dutt
Cast: Anjan Dutt, Arjun Chakrabarty, Anindita Bose, Rajdeep Gupta, Sourav Chakraborty, Sandip Sen, Suprobhat Das, Rajat Ganguly
Streaming on: HoiChoi
A good thriller series is hard to come by these days. I have found that, of late, nothing in the thriller genre surprises me: No coincidences, multiple unreliable characters, Orange Pips, distant power-hungry cousins, or Phosphorus-coated hounds can detract from what is obvious. More so, when the director zooms in on the inspiration behind the idea in a vivid screenshot. Surely, as an ode to the original, no doubt. But if one has read Agatha Christie’s novels, one can easily guess the turn of events before the exhibit.
Having read and watched a bunch of thrillers, reading detective novels and re-re-revisiting Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s novels have made me conscious of every plot twist that can exist in the thriller universe. The only one that seemed innovative and a little fresh was Honey Trehan’s Raat Akeli Hai, which was released almost a year ago.
Hoichoi’s Murder in the Hills, a re-imagining of Murder on the Orient Express, tells the dark tale of a grandiose actor, post his death, and the can of worms the aftermath exposes. The actors were good, and there were a few interactions in the movie which were well choreographed.
But, the overall narrative fell short of expectations.
The dialogues weren’t consistent and were off the cuff in a majority of sequences. Although Anjan Dutt, the writer-director, may have wanted us to believe that this obscurity was put in place deliberately to re-create the confusion designed in the Murder on the Orient Express, it is far from it.
In trying to stick too close to the storyline of “Murder on the Orient Express”, the web series miserably fails at a few places as it doesn’t even justify why a crucial element is present, as it was coherently laid out in the original. For example, why was the journalist even invited to the birthday party, where the murder was to be committed? The shoddy explanation given at the end of the show doesn’t even justify this. It seems that Anjan Dutt wanted Arjun Chakrabarty’s journalist to be at the party for the sake of the plot, and tried to hurriedly close the gap with some whimsical explanation.
Also, for a story that required descriptions of events from 3 different timelines, it forgot to get the basics right on creating distinctions among each other. Why did the scenes that were supposed to have been taken place 30 years ago have the same color as the scenes in the present? Is the audience supposed to piece them together to tell that the two timelines were apart? This is an epic failure in cinematic storytelling which involves elements from different timelines. Films such as Ghulam and The Godfather: Part II have got this spot on. Which makes “Murder on the Hills” look lazy, amateurish, and undeserving of attention.
Honestly, after watching HoiChoi’s Byomkesh series, Taqdeer, and other good ones, this was a major disappointment.
