The Stoneman Murders: A slasher of a debut! review
Slasher movies are a genre by themselves, thanks to Hollywood's B-grade flicks that have a legion of followers. In India too, a number of copies of the HW slasher movies have come - and gone. But here's a movie, roughly from the same genre, but taking its cue from real life, that's going to stay - in the minds of viewers, and in the annals of Hindi cinema - for being goosebump inducing, thrilling to the core and matter of fact.
The Stoneman Murders is an A-grade debut by Manish Gupta (if you don't count his short in the Ram Gopal Varma-produced Darna Zaroori Hai) that gives us one of the most-authentic thrillers of recent times, with more than one brilliant scenes that keep up the thrill quotient of the film.
Based on the Stoneman murders of mid-1980s in Mumbai (which was followed by similar serial murders in Kolkata in 1989, both unsolved till date), Gupta's film that has all the best elements of the genre. It is crisp, fast, does not reveal the killer till the end, has an interesting ending, is helmed by Kay Kay Menon's brilliant acting and does not beat around the bush. Even the ‘˜item number' does help in taking forward the story, unlike the usual such songs that put a brake in the narrative.
A thriller or a mystery movie wins the game - and the audience - by holding on to the ‘˜secret' till the end. And The Stoneman Murders does that quite efficiently, and the end-game, after the killer's identity is revealed (unlike in real life in which neither Mumbai nor Kolkata killings were ever solved), is set up to bring a credible finale to the story, even hinting at a link between the two series of killings while taking a dig at the police force of Mumbai which failed to crack the case.
This Kaleidoscope-Vistaar Religare production rides solely and purely on the shoulders of Kay Kay Menon, and he delivers quite brilliantly, bringing alive the agony and frustration of a suspended cop who launches a parallel probe into the mystery killings. Kay Kay has some able support from Vikram Gokhale and Virendra Saxena, and even Arbaaz Khan seems to be able to deliver this time, being in able company. The only weak link in the acting department is Rukhsar, as Kay Kay's wife.
Friday the 13th is an apt date for the release of a film of this genre, and going by the narrative, it could prove to be a lucky day for debutant Gupta, who had written RGV's Sarkar. A slasher of a debut for sure. The only question that remains is - did the Mumbai stoneman operate in 1983, as the film suggests, or in 1985, as records show?
