monika o my darling movie review

Review: 'Strange Darling' is a cinematic punch in the gut that'll keep you guessing

The film stars Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner and more.

Did summer save its thrillingest thriller for last? That's what it looks like in "Strange Darling," now in theaters, where it keeps juggling time frames to throw us off course to investigate what writer-director JT Mollner called, in an interview with Collider , "one day in the romantic twisted love life of a serial killer."

Intrigued? You should be. I pause here to warn you that going in cold is the best way to approach the perverse pleasures of "Strange Darling." My advice? Come back to this review after you've seen it and we'll talk. There many delicious, nerve-frying shocks to deconstruct.

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An onscreen message, read by Jason Patric, tells us we'll be diving into the head of a serial killer in six nonlinear chapters. So why not start with Chapter 3, in which we watch a terrified woman (Willa Fitzgerald), wearing blood-red scrubs, screaming "help me" as she runs for her life down a road while a dude (Kyle Gallner), in a pickup truck, shotgun in hand, is hot on her tail?

Think you know what happens next? Don't be a fool. You won't have a clue. Zipping into Chapter 5, we hear the dude utter the teasing, menacing words, "Here, kitty kitty kitty." That's three kitties, and each is more chilling than the next.

Snap to Chapter 1 and we learn that the woman has a safe word: "Mr. Snuffy," after Mr. Snuffleupagus of "Sesame Street." The word comes in handy during a hotel stop for a one-night stand during which the man tries to strangle her.

"Sometimes when I see people, I see demons," she announces, referring to him as "Demon."

In Chapter 4, the "Lady," as the Demon calls her, seeks refuge at a cabin occupied by a seemingly nice couple, delightfully played by acting veterans Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey. Much time is spent watching the couple prepare a breakfast of eggs with heavy dollops of butter and whipped cream. Of course, warm domesticity soon descends into sheer terror.

Ketamine and cocaine are introduced as early as Chapter 2 and will play a major role in maintaining control for the Lady and the Demon.

"Strange Darling" quits being contrary and ends where it should end with Chapter 6, entitled "Who is Gary Gilmore?" Gilmore was a real-life murderer who was executed by firing squad in 1977 and became the subject of Norman Mailer's nonfiction classic, "The Executioner's Song." I'll leave you to figure out how Gilmore fits into this tale of strange bedfellows.

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Confession: I've been withholding major plot points from you in this review, merely sketching in the bones of the story. It really is best to go in blind. Visually, "Strange Darling" tells its own story, eerily abetted by the evocative lighting and camerawork contributed by Giovanni Ribisi, the "Avatar" actor making a dazzling feature debut as a cinematographer.

And the actors similarly rise to the macabre occasion. Fitzgerald ("Reacher," "The Fall of the House of Usher") seizes the role of her career to date as the Lady and takes it to places you truly don't see coming. And Gallner, so good in films as diverse as "Smile" and "The Passenger," is a spine-tingling wonder as this so-called Demon who keeps showing haunting vestiges of humanity. He's simply sensational.

Still, it's filmmaker Mollner who deserves cheers for the wow factor he packs into this cinematic punch in the gut. With only one other film to his credit, the wobbly 2016 western "Outlaws and Angels," Mollner shows he's ready for the big leagues, given the artful cunning and masterful control he reveals in "Strange Darling." You truly won't know what hit you.

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Review: 'Strange Darling' is a cinematic punch in the gut that'll keep you guessing

Did summer save its thrillingest thriller for last? That's what it looks like in "Strange Darling," now in theaters, where it keeps juggling time frames to throw us off course to investigate what writer-director JT Mollner called, in an interview with Collider , "one day in the romantic twisted love life of a serial killer."

Intrigued? You should be. I pause here to warn you that going in cold is the best way to approach the perverse pleasures of "Strange Darling." My advice? Come back to this review after you've seen it and we'll talk. There many delicious, nerve-frying shocks to deconstruct.

Related Articles

Review: 'blink twice' is a ticking time bomb of a movie that makes every second count.

An onscreen message, read by Jason Patric, tells us we'll be diving into the head of a serial killer in six nonlinear chapters. So why not start with Chapter 3, in which we watch a terrified woman (Willa Fitzgerald), wearing blood-red scrubs, screaming "help me" as she runs for her life down a road while a dude (Kyle Gallner), in a pickup truck, shotgun in hand, is hot on her tail?

Think you know what happens next? Don't be a fool. You won't have a clue. Zipping into Chapter 5, we hear the dude utter the teasing, menacing words, "Here, kitty kitty kitty." That's three kitties, and each is more chilling than the next.

Snap to Chapter 1 and we learn that the woman has a safe word: "Mr. Snuffy," after Mr. Snuffleupagus of "Sesame Street." The word comes in handy during a hotel stop for a one-night stand during which the man tries to strangle her.

"Sometimes when I see people, I see demons," she announces, referring to him as "Demon."

In Chapter 4, the "Lady," as the Demon calls her, seeks refuge at a cabin occupied by a seemingly nice couple, delightfully played by acting veterans Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey. Much time is spent watching the couple prepare a breakfast of eggs with heavy dollops of butter and whipped cream. Of course, warm domesticity soon descends into sheer terror.

Ketamine and cocaine are introduced as early as Chapter 2 and will play a major role in maintaining control for the Lady and the Demon.

"Strange Darling" quits being contrary and ends where it should end with Chapter 6, entitled "Who is Gary Gilmore?" Gilmore was a real-life murderer who was executed by firing squad in 1977 and became the subject of Norman Mailer's nonfiction classic, "The Executioner's Song." I'll leave you to figure out how Gilmore fits into this tale of strange bedfellows.

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Review: 'Trap' quickly dives off the cliff from disappointment to disaster

• Aug 02, 2024

Confession: I've been withholding major plot points from you in this review, merely sketching in the bones of the story. It really is best to go in blind. Visually, "Strange Darling" tells its own story, eerily abetted by the evocative lighting and camerawork contributed by Giovanni Ribisi, the "Avatar" actor making a dazzling feature debut as a cinematographer.

And the actors similarly rise to the macabre occasion. Fitzgerald ("Reacher," "The Fall of the House of Usher") seizes the role of her career to date as the Lady and takes it to places you truly don't see coming. And Gallner, so good in films as diverse as "Smile" and "The Passenger," is a spine-tingling wonder as this so-called Demon who keeps showing haunting vestiges of humanity. He's simply sensational.

Still, it's filmmaker Mollner who deserves cheers for the wow factor he packs into this cinematic punch in the gut. With only one other film to his credit, the wobbly 2016 western "Outlaws and Angels," Mollner shows he's ready for the big leagues, given the artful cunning and masterful control he reveals in "Strange Darling." You truly won't know what hit you.

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Jt mollner pulls back the curtain on ‘strange darling’: i was never “trying to fool the audience”.

The writer-director behind one of 2024's most acclaimed film's talks its twists and turns (and getting the endorsement of Stephen King).

By Brian Davids

Brian Davids

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[This story contains major spoilers for Strange Darling .]

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'strange darling' star willa fitzgerald breaks down the shocking end of her acclaimed thriller, how giovanni ribisi ended up photographing 'strange darling,' one of 2024's best-reviewed films.

Venturing into spoiler territory, the film’s marketing and first few chapters may establish Fitzgerald’s character as the target of a serial killer, but she was actually the one targeting Gallner’s character in the midst of their combative one-night stand. Known as the notorious “Electric Lady” serial killer, she didn’t realize that she was toying with an off-duty cop, so she finally met her match after a prolific two-year killing spree across multiple states.

When the film premiered at 2023’s Fantastic Fest, Mollner admits that numerous interested parties were stumped as to how to sell the movie to audiences, given its inherent sleight of hand.

“At the beginning, a lot of people were like, ‘We love this movie, but we don’t know how to approach this,’” Mollner tells The Hollywood Reporter . “So we found a company [via Magenta Light Studios] who formulated an approach and created some really great marketing materials. So it was possible to market the movie.”

Mollner’s second feature may have ever-changing character dynamics because of its nonlinear structure, but he always encouraged his actors to play their parts authentically. So he didn’t tell Gallner to feign the role of a serial killer at times, nor did he urge Fitzgerald to pose as the victim in situations where the viewer thinks she’s one.

The Electric Lady subverts the final girl trope by being a serial killer who outlives all the other characters until a good Samaritan stops her truck to offer this seemingly war-torn woman a helping hand. Just moments prior, the Electric Lady explained to her final victim that she primarily kills people who briefly appear as the devil to her. So, when she steps inside the good Samaritan’s truck, she quickly sees the devil in her own reflection, resulting in tears of relief. That’s when she draws her gun, but before she can pull the trigger in one direction or another, Sherri Foster Blake’s good Samaritan, who’s credited as The Driver, puts an end to the Electric Lady’s reign of terror with a weapon of her own.

The lingering question is whether the Electric Lady was going to stay true to her tendency of killing devils, meaning herself in this case, or if she was going to murder The Driver. Fitzgerald all but confirmed this writer’s interpretation that the Lady was determined to commit suicide, but Mollner prefers to keep the ending as ambiguous as possible. 

“I love The Hollywood Reporter , but I’ve made a deal with myself to never answer that question to anybody. I know how I feel about it, and there’s so many different versions of what people are getting out of that scene,” Mollner says. “So I love the complexity of that scene, and I like that that’s the conclusion you came to because it certainly could be the case.”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR , Mollner also discusses how Giovanni Ribisi ended up as Strange Darling ’s DP and producer. Then he details Stephen King’s dual endorsement of both his new film and his upcoming screenplay adaptation of The Long Walk for Francis Lawrence.

So you shot Strange Darling entirely on 35 mm, and it was done so by Giovanni Ribisi , which has prompted many double takes. What’s your own history with celluloid and how did that lead to Giovanni as your DP and producer?

Ever since I started directing short films a long time ago and went into my first very low-budget feature [ Outlaws and Angels ], I wanted to shoot film. But when I was coming up as a filmmaker, almost everybody who was doing low budget stuff and short films and scraping by to create content was shooting digitally, just like most people now. So it was really important for me to shoot film because the movies I grew up with as a kid looked a certain way and had a certain amount of texture and depth and feeling. I wanted to be on sets where I could hear cameras roll and smell celluloid, but when I finally got into filmmaking, that wasn’t really happening anymore. So it became a huge priority of mine to do that, and I had to beg, borrow and steal to make sure I could raise enough money to shoot film on my short films and first feature. Instead of making 30 short films in five years, I only made five, because it was always just a big priority. 

And so, one year, Steve Bellamy took me to the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers] awards, because Kodak always has a table and they’ll usually have a filmmaker, an actor, and some people from Kodak there. And, that year, Giovanni Ribisi and I were two of the guests. I’ve always been a huge fan of his as an actor, and so we started talking right away. I actually started plotting how to get him in my next movie as an actor, but what I realized was that he was very, very passionate about cinematography. He told me he’d been shooting music videos and commercials for probably 10 years at the time, but he hadn’t done a feature film yet. So he invited me over to his studio, Stellascope, to look at his camera equipment, and we bonded over a similar passion and love for celluloid. He just adored the medium. 

We then became film buddies. We started texting each other at night, saying, “I’m watching Kwaidan on the Criterion Channel,” or, “I just watched Dead Ringers again for the first time in many years.” We went back and forth on movies, and we had this film-dork friendship. I then sent a few scripts to him, because he said he was very interested in producing and shooting something, and [ Strange Darling , then known as One Night With You ] ended up just being the one. We’d been looking to work together for a number of years, and this is the project that spoke to him. 

Are you permitted to say what the official budget was? 

I’m not even aware. It’s because Miramax essentially bought the script from me, and then they hired me to direct it. It wasn’t like my last movie where I was very involved in the budget process, as one of the main producers. But this was my first studio movie, and I know the budget is somewhere over $3 million and somewhere below $10 million. I wasn’t exactly thinking about the budget as I was writing it, but I knew that it was contained enough and limited enough as far as the amount of cast and everything. And once I finished the script, I was like, “Wow, if I needed to, I could shoot this thing for a few hundred thousand dollars.” It would be a much different movie, but it was still made for what felt like a low budget and was considered a low budget. We had major limitations. Our shooting schedule wasn’t long.

M. Night Shyamalan urges up-and-coming filmmakers to consider how to market and frame their movies while writing and shooting, because a film’s marketing team initiates the storytelling experience. Well, it seems like Strange Darling may have used a similar strategy. Did you actually know how you’d eventually market this movie at the script level? 

No, I respect and admire M. Night Shyamalan in a major way. He’s a profound influence on so many of us, and I can’t wait to see his new film [ Trap ], but I actually disagree. If I had been thinking about how to market this movie while I was writing it, I may not have written it. It’s so difficult as an artist to discipline yourself to sit down and write and complete a screenplay. I’m compelled to do it and I have to do it, but it never stops being a grind. The only way I’m able to get through that process is to have it be something that totally inspires me, artistically, or somebody hires me to adapt a novel. It then becomes fun because it’s a high level of work. But when writing something original, it’s got to really get me excited. I’ve got to love the idea, and it’s got to gestate in my brain and in my heart for a good period of time before I finally have to write it. 

Well, let’s dive into spoiler territory. The first half of the film is framed as if Kyle Gallner’s “The Demon” character is a serial killer, but it’s actually Willa Fitzgerald ’s “The Lady,” which is short for her serial killer name of Electric Lady. Did the marketing team basically decide to mirror what the first half of the movie was doing anyway? 

Well, the conundrum was that I wanted to present all the trailers, posters, interviews and everything that had anything to do with the movie as a very simple “predator versus final girl.” That’s it. So the marketing team had to find a way to present it that way, but also hint at the fact that there’s more character complexity and more emotional complexity and just something different about the story. They were afraid, and for good reason, that if they just marketed it like the first chapter of the movie, then we’d only get people who want a very traditional cookie-cutter cat-and-mouse film. We’d miss out on all the people who want something different and something new.

Did you play any mind games with the actors to achieve the desired guessing-game effect? For example, during the opening car chase, did you direct Kyle to play the part like he’s really the serial killer? Did you get that psychological with each chapter? Or did you let the context and structure do that work instead? 

That’s a great question, and nobody has really asked me that, even outside of interviews. Narratively, the movie fools the audience, but I was never intentionally trying to fool the audience. So I never told either actor to act like a final girl in distress or a serial killer on the run. Willa and Kyle were just tremendous, and we talked about how this movie is essentially a love story. It’s about the different representations of a relationship’s phases and a relationship eventually going bad. 

Love hurts …

So it is a temper explosion, but he was never supposed to play a villain or a predator with no purpose. I never said, “Act like Leatherface here.” On a subtextual level or a subconscious level, I felt like the people watching the movie would feel like I was trying to manipulate them in a dishonest way. We’re still manipulating them, but it’s only because the story is out of sequence. And what I wanted the movie to be about was expectations and subversion of those expectations when it comes to stereotypes and archetypes. Somebody might be acting this way in this scene, but let’s see what happened to them the night before to get them to this place.

So we always talked about being honest with the characters’ emotions and who they are. It makes a second viewing more interesting than it could have been. If we were just feeding into those archetypes and those characters weren’t acting honestly, you’d go back to the opening act and be like, “Well, that’s a little far-fetched.” But if you go back and watch the opening act now, you’ll see moments where he seems a little bit vulnerable and a little scared. You’ll also see moments where she looks a little bit tough, and there are indicators of what’s to come, like when she stops and smokes that cigarette in the forest. It’s weird to finally be talking about this stuff now.

What do you think? 

When she saw the devil in herself, I think she realized that she had to honor her pattern or code of killing devils by killing herself. She then cries because she knows she’s about to free herself of this burden. But the good Samaritan obviously didn’t know what was going on inside her head, so she jumped the gun.

I love The Hollywood Reporter , and I was so excited to do this, but I’ve made a deal with myself to never answer that question to anybody. I know how I feel about it, and there’s so many different versions of what people are getting out of that scene. It’s really exciting that people are sometimes seeing it in such a different way than I imagined and sometimes in the same way. So I love the complexity of that scene, and I like that that’s the conclusion you came to because it certainly could be the case. But I don’t want to talk about how I feel about it. It’ll ruin things for the rest of you reading this. [ Writer’s Note: Willa Fitzgerald also wanted to avoid being too definitive, but she seemingly agreed with the above reading. ] 

Electric Lady proceeds to die in a oner that concludes the movie. Is that a dying look of satisfaction on her face? Is part of her impressed by the good Samaritan? 

I think that’s a fascinating interpretation, and if you saw that in her, then there’s probably a little of that there.

I don’t really write in those terms, and I don’t think about things in those terms. If it gives somebody satisfaction because that’s where they’re coming from and they’re projecting that onto it, then great. But the intention with everything that happens in this movie is always narrative surprise, especially with this specific exercise. I’ve written other films that maybe have more of a specific social message or something I’m trying to subversively push. But this movie was an exercise in surprise and subverting expectations, stereotypes and archetypes. What do those things mean? So I tried to figure out the most believable outcome to every scene that could also surprise.

You have this opening crawl that sets up the film as if it’s a true crime story. Did you take a page out of the Fargo playbook where it’s not actually based on a true crime?

No, I actually read a story about a similar killer in the U.K. So there was definitely some reality at play when the character was conceptualized, and I’m going to try my best not to talk about that specific story in the next couple months. It would muddy the waters of the movie. But we’re definitely leaning into traditional horror tropes in the opening of the movie, and there’s a number of them there. Some of the influences are obvious, like Duel and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . Jason Patric steps in to do the John Larroquette voiceover from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is one of the most iconic horror openings in the history of American cinema. So we really wanted to lean into that. We also wanted to give the audience a sense of immediacy and honesty, and remind them that there are true elements to this story, which hopefully makes it scarier and more visceral and more intriguing.

Where did Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hersey’s monstrous concoction known as “Sunday breakfast” originate?

The funniest moment in the film is when the Lady yells, “He’s got a gun!” and the neighboring motel guest yells back, “Well, so do I!” That was your dad, Duke Mollner, right?  

It was! That moment has been getting a really wonderful audience reaction with a lot of laughs. He was the star of two of my short films, and then he played the sheriff in my Western, Outlaws and Angels . He’s been in everything that I’ve ever done, so it’s always really fun to work with him. We really focus on two characters the entire movie, so I knew he was going to have to do something very small, but I wanted it to be memorable and impactful. So I love that moment, and I’m glad you noticed.

Z Berg’s music , including the aforementioned “Love Hurts,” is one of the film’s key ingredients. Was her version of “Love Hurts” actually played diegetically in the motel room on the day?

Other than “Love Hurts,” “Into the Night” is the only song other that Z Berg didn’t write or record for the album. It’s a song that I liked from her previous album, and I put it into the hotel scene when the Lady and the Demon are having their moment earlier on. In the original draft of the script that I sent to Z and to Giovanni and to everybody else, it actually says, “Woman running in slow motion with ‘Love Hurts’ covered by Z Berg.” So that was the dream, but I didn’t know if we’d get that song. 

With “Love Hurts,” we hoped we could get the rights to cover that, and when she did end up covering it, we knew she was going to stay true to the Emmylou Harris version. That’s why she brought in Keith Carradine to do it with her. But when we used it in the hotel room and the Lady sang along, we played the Emmylou Harris version on the day. We then went in and recorded the Z’s version later.

One of the original songs, “To Forget You,” was sung by my mom, Ginnie Pallone Mollner. She has the voice of an angel, and had a career performing in Hollywood and Las Vegas in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s always been my dream to have her on a major movie soundtrack, and Z and her dad Tony Berg produced the song and made that dream come true. It plays on the radio during a few of the scenes and is featured on the soundtrack album. So I had the great pleasure of getting to work with both my mother and father on the film.

Stephen King praised Strange Darling , and you recently adapted his novel, The Long Walk , for Francis Lawrence. Does that mean he endorsed your Long Walk script as well? 

*** Strange Darling is now playing in movie theaters .

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Monica O My Darling (2022) Movie Review – A pulpy, retro-but-fresh murder mystery

A pulpy, hilarious, retro-but-fresh murder mystery.

“If Anurag Kashyap and Shriram Raghvan had an offspring, it would be Vasan Bala”. That is what a friend of yours truly remarked after watching Bala’s Monica O My Darling and he is not wrong. For those unfamiliar with Indian cinema, Kashyap and Raghvan have distinct narrative styles.

Filmmakers in the Hindi industry have often been reluctant to experiment but auteurs like these have a major presence in how their films turn out. Bala first broke onto the scene with Mard ko Dard Nahi Hota in 2018. It was quite similar to Monica O My Darling in tone, combining quirky with heady. Bala’s amalgamation of Kashyap’s rawness and Raghvan’s metrical approach comes alive with splendor in Monica .

The premise is far from simple but confined to a company called Unicorn Robotics. Its employees – Jayant, Monica, Nishi, Arvind, and Gaurav – are quite ironically attached to each other but not in a pleasant way. Most of the action takes place through Jayant’s (Rajkumar Rao) perspective. He is the audience’s eye in the cinematic universe and navigates compelling mysteries of murder, disappearances, and extortion on his own. Bala’s world is surprisingly isolating and impressively avoids self-indulgence at the same time.

Even when the camera is not on the other characters, they are always in play and are potent enough to surprise with something unexpected. His flavorful style of filmmaking is replete with pop-culture references. The little episodes where he breaks the norm and carves devilishly enticing set pieces for his characters are interesting side plays. If one browses modern cinema, that aspect of narration most closely resembles Quentin Tarantino. Like his characters, Bala’s characters are more than just lines on a piece of paper. An easter egg for fans of Bala’s 2018 film is the presence of Radhika Madaan as Supri in one of the scenes, possibly hinting at a confluence sometime later on. Film enthusiasts will find more such opportunities in Monica’ s runtime, making for a clever creative choice.

The visual fabric has many throwbacks to the golden era of Bollywood when it was breaking out of the shackles of social realism. The industry as a whole went through a tumultuous metamorphosis and embraced a new zany, retro vibe that attracted more flies to the cake. Costume, music, and story format are the chief weapons Bala uses here to give Monica that nostalgic undertone. As a result, the film resembles a lot of hit ’70s and ’80s Hindi cinema. Huma Quereshi is perhaps the biggest surprise package and rules the screen with her central femme fatale act. She is Monica, after all, and is the story’s chief catalyst. Without her, all the events do not happen and the worlds of Unicron’s corrupted men never collide.

Monica ‘s biggest strength, though, is the fact that it constantly unfolds. There is undeniably the presence of a layered story where each person plays a part. Style aside, the core story is ladled with important emotional decisions and choices that carve the path forward. During, before, and after they have gone one way, it is certainly not easy for them to reflect on them afterward. Bala makes sure that there is continuity in the sense that each decision comes back to influence the future. This consistency is quite admirable and a glaring miss in most Hindi movies these days. Monica ‘s relentless world of crime often leaves them and the viewers with surprising conclusions.

Despite the overwhelming positives, Bala’s protagonist feels unconvincing. This is one of those rare occasions that Rajkumar Rao did not live up to expectations. That very well might be due to the lackluster work in the development room but even on screen, Rao feels out of place. The depth we are so used to seeing in his works is somewhat missing here. Jayant, as a character, is sort of thrown from one corner to the other without too much intervention. He is a pawn in a larger game not controlled or understood by him. Maybe that arch could have gone down differently.

Another ineffective part of the storytelling is the lack of composure in the third act. It seems almost wilfully ignorant how the frailties of the murder mystery come exposed in the final leg. In spite of a masterful second act, Bala comes up short linking the missing pieces to make them equally decisive. The noir elements feel like a cover-up of sorts when it comes down to the core conceit of the story.

Overall, Monica O My Darling is a thoroughly enjoyable weekend watch. It has come at the perfect time when the Hindi industry was craving a different experience. Vasan Bala clearly has a long way to go in the future and hopefully, some of his idiosyncrasies could rub off on other filmmaker duds.

Read More: Monica O My Darling Ending Explained

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• Verdict - 7.5/10 7.5/10

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Monica, O My Darling Reviews

The rawness of the corporate politics, the awkwardness of the romance, the sexism in the atmosphere, and the murderous streak running through all these characters are palpable and seem like things we see in our everyday lives.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 20, 2023

The women are fierce and place their careers much above anything else. Each of them hold power and work around it strategically, their priorities cut out.

Full Review | Jan 31, 2023

A story of sex, betrayal, and unlikely criminals, Monica O My Darling makes for a great movie night viewing.

Full Review | Nov 18, 2022

On the whole, and despite those slow spots, and a few twists which we figure long before the characters do, with a cracker of a beginning and an end which slithers in most unexpectedly, ‘Monica’ ends up being a fun watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 16, 2022

Monica, O My Darling has a lot going for it, but over-complexity and unnecessary length keep it from being as enjoyable as it might otherwise be.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 15, 2022

The visual style would often pick up the story even if there was a bit of a lull.

Full Review | Nov 14, 2022

Rajkummar Rao’s superbly judged amoral climber is the star of the show. Finally handed a part that matches his protean talent, Rao easily towers over most of the cast.

Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte's performances aren't enough to save this Vasan Bala thriller.

Rajkummar Rao is never off the boil. Huma Qureshi fleshes out Monica in all her splendour.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2022

OTT platforms are full of riveting and dark murder mysteries of all kinds. So, ‘Monica O my darling’ has a lot to compete with even on its own platform where we’ve have seen far better.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 14, 2022

Rajkummar Rao aces his role in a flawed yet enjoyable neo-noir thriller designed as a tribute to the genre and a bow to an earlier era of Hindi cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 13, 2022

Monica, O My Darlings reclaims the narrative from the sweaty dudes who’ve been in charge for so long, and foregrounds the sort of character who’d normally be restricted to the sidelines.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2022

High on offhanded humour and nasty surprises, Monica, O My Darling evokes Sriram Raghavan and Coen Brothers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 11, 2022

With his latest film, Bala locates the purpose for moral transgression embedded in the noir genre: to belong, to be seen but most importantly to be acknowledged.

Full Review | Original Score: 3 | Nov 11, 2022

A hotbed of hate aggravated by sex, which eventually leads to murder.

Full Review | Nov 11, 2022

Monica, O Darling doesn’t manage to use the sum of its parts to become a true blue noir like it claims to be.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 11, 2022

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Monica, o my darling.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 0 Reviews
• Kids Say 1 Review

Common Sense Media Review

Comedy tale about murder has language, violence.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know Monica, O My Darling is an Indian murder comedy with multiple twists and turns involving knives, cleavers, belts, snake venom, rogue robots set against corporate infighting, an unwanted pregnancy, and office jealousy. A man and woman are seen briefly through a curtained glass door having…

Why Age 14+?

"F--k," "s--t," "ass," "balls," "hell," "bitch," "damn," "d--k," and "crap."

A man is deliberately killed by a large robot that twists his neck. Later, multi

A man and woman are briefly seen having standing, clothed sex through a curtaine

Adults drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. Snake venom is used to commit murder.

Any Positive Content?

The movie is set in India with an Indian cast.

No one is to be trusted. Don't dwell in the past.

Jay is a talented engineer but an innocent among sharks.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

A man is deliberately killed by a large robot that twists his neck. Later, multiple murders all related to a corporation are set in motion. A man is pushed off a roof but isn't harmed. Poisonous snakes are sent to kill people. Snake venom is used to kill others. A man intends to kill someone with a razor but is interrupted. Strangulation by belt is attempted and someone attempts murder using a large wrench as a weapon.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man and woman are briefly seen having standing, clothed sex through a curtained glass door. Someone refers to online porn as a joke. A woman is having affairs with several men working in her office, claiming to be pregnant by more than one of them.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Parents need to know Monica, O My Darling is an Indian murder comedy with multiple twists and turns involving knives, cleavers, belts, snake venom, rogue robots set against corporate infighting, an unwanted pregnancy, and office jealousy. A man and woman are seen briefly through a curtained glass door having clothed sex. Someone refers to online porn as a joke. A woman has affairs with several men working in her office, claiming to be pregnant by more than one of them. A man is deliberately killed by a large robot that twists his neck. A man is pushed off a roof but isn't harmed. Poisonous snakes are sent to kill people. Snake venom is used to kill others. A man intends to kill someone with a razor but is interrupted. Strangulation by belt is attempted and someone attempts murder using a large wrench as a weapon. Adults drink wine and smoke cigarettes. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "balls," "hell," "bitch," "damn," "d--k," and "crap." In Hindi and Tamil with English subtitles. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say
• Kids say (1)

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

In the murder-comedy MONICA, O MY DARLING, Jay (Rajkummar Rao) is a promising engineer at a tech company, engaged to the boss' daughter, Nikki (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor). When Jay's industrial robot grabs a man by his neck and twists it, Jay becomes a murder suspect. Life becomes even more complicated when Monica (Huma Qureshi), the woman he and several other execs are having affairs with, announces she's having Jay's baby. She threatens to tell his fiancee and soon a plot to murder Monica is hatched and goes wrong, resulting in other murders. The police are breathing down Jay's neck as he tries to keep all his secrets straight while looking for the actual killer and a document that could send him to prison.

Is It Any Good?

Monica, O My Darling has a lot going for it, but over-complexity and unnecessary length keep it from being as enjoyable as it might otherwise be. The mandatory big musical production number feels out of place and adds to the running time without doing much to move the murder mystery plot forward. For those familiar with Indian cinema, there are reportedly references to other well-known Indian films.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the ease with which people here discuss murder as the best solution to problems. Do you think that's supposed to be funny? Why or why not?

Is this a good whodunnit? Could you guess the killer?

How well does the movie combine murder and comedy? How do you know some of this is meant to be funny?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : November 11, 2022
• Cast : Rajkummar Rao , Huma Qureshi , Sikander Kher
• Director : Vasan Bala
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Monica O My Darling’ on Netflix, A Crime Drama That Radiates ‘Knives Out’ Vibes

Where to stream:.

• Monica, O My Darling

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Modern Masters: S.S. Rajamouli’ on Netflix, A Documentary About The World Renowned 'RRR' Filmmaker

11 best new movies on netflix: august 2024's freshest films to watch, stream it or skip it: ‘wild wild punjab’ on netflix, a slapstick hindi-language road trip movie, stream it or skip it: ‘monkey man’ on peacock, dev patel's wild and brutal action-revenge epic.

Netflix India has teamed up with its favorite stars Rajkummar Rao and Radhika Apte again (the former starred in the Priyanka Chopra novel adaptation The White Tiger and comedy Ludo , while the latter has appeared in Netflix dramas like Sacred Games , Ghoul , Raat Akeli Hai and Lust Stories ). From director Vasan Bala comes a new crime drama Monica, O My Darling , which pulls its name from the 1971 song “Piya Tu Ab To Aaja” lyrics.

MONICA O MY DARLING : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jayant (Rajkummar Rao), a young robotics engineer from a modest background, has made a name for himself at Unicorn Robotics: he’s about to be named successor to the CEO and is engaged to the founder’s CEO. But when Monica (Huma Qureshi), the CEO’s secretary and his mistress, tells him that she’s pregnant with his child, he’s afraid that everything he’s worked for will come crashing down. Jayant concocts a plan to silence Monica with a few unlikely allies who are also under her spell, though things don’t end up going according to plan — and the bodies start piling up.

What Will It Remind You Of?: Both the casting and the stylistic nature of the film give off a Knives Out vibe, as the world is inhabited with eccentric characters and the filmmaking is unique and memorable.

Performance Worth Watching: Sikandar Kher plays Nishikant Adhikari, Jayant’s future brother-in-law and another man caught up with Monica. He doesn’t have much screentime but is especially good in the hotel room scene where the trio hatch their plan.

Memorable Dialogue: Radhika Apte appears about halfway through the film as a police officer investigating the crime. She’s immediately suspicious of Jayant, who has a lot to gain from the murders, because of the way he carries himself. “Never ever report a backstory so perfectly. The more perfect the story, the more doubt,” she tells him when he launches into a story about his fear of snakes after someone is bit by a venomous cobra.

Sex and Skin: Despite a premise hinging upon multiple extramarital affairs, the film doesn’t really delve into showing us that part of the story.

Our Take: A story of sex, betrayal, and unlikely criminals, Monica O My Darling makes for a great movie night viewing. Rao and Qureshi are superb, especially Qureshi who delights in playing an object of desire but imbues her with depth. Many of the supporting cast members are also cast perfectly, with each slightly off-kilter in their own way but still feel cohesive in the larger story.

There are a few holes in the story: the film lacks depth when it comes to tertiary characters who end up being important to the story, and Radhika Apte’s character is pitched a little too high in her eccentricity. The final act also left me a little confused as it related to Apte’s involvement in the hijinks.

The film is very stylistic with close-ups, fantastical recreations in character memories, and in the choice of music used throughout the film. It all feels deliberate and even though director Vasan Bala hasn’t directed much before, it’s clear he has full control of what’s happening here. The resulting Monica O My Darling is enthralling from start to finish.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The plot is fast-moving, performances are great, and stylistically is very fun to watch.

Radhika Menon ( @menonrad ) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.

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‘Monica, O My Darling’ movie review: Vasan Bala’s notorious noir is intoxicating

Interspersed with juicy pop culture references and infectious musical interludes, the rajkummar rao, huma qureshi and radhika apte-starrer is more than just a well-crafted whodunit .

Updated - November 11, 2022 06:16 pm IST

Published - November 11, 2022 12:45 pm IST

Rajkummar Rao in ‘Monica, O My Darling’ | Photo Credit: Supriya Kantak/Netflix

A taut pulp thriller that makes more than a few astute observations on the quirkiness of human nature along the way, Vasan Bala’s  Monica, O My Darling  is a bright addition to the thin list of Indian noir.

A juicy adaptation of Japanese author Keigo Higashino’s mystery novel  Burutasu No Shinzou,  Bala intelligently localises the exotic ingredients for the Indian palate.

More than just a whodunit, the witty narrative is interspersed with delicious pop-culture references and infectious musical interludes. From Vijay Anand to Sriram Raghavan, Vasan Bala gives a hat tip to masters of Indian noir. In fact, those who have followed Raghavan’s work would almost feel the spirit of  Johnny Gaddaar (2007)  lingering around throughout the film.

In a smart display of self-awareness in writing, Radhika Apte, who plays a sassy cop Naidu, tells a suspect that a perfect back story always creates doubt: “Dheele chhodne ka, feel ke saath.” This is exactly what Bala does. He lets us enjoy the process of coming to the edge of our seats. Even if we know who he is, the whimsical journey to reach there is appetising. He lets the red herrings breathe and generates a feeling for each one of them by referring to real issues in between a fast-paced scenario.

Monica, O My Darling

Between the layers there lie references to manual control of machines, self-seeking corporate governance, and the new engineering graduates’ inability to look beyond coding. Easier said than done, but Bala knows how to ride his hobby horse. Very much like his protagonist Monica Machado (Huma Qureshi), who works as a personal secretary to Adhikari, the owner of a tech firm that makes robotic machines. Monica thinks she knows how to make robots out of men, until a snake crosses her path.

One of the men on Monica’s lust list is Jayant Arkhedkar (Rajkummar Rao). The self-obsessed, self-made techie, who is called Johnny by his sister’s fiance and colleague Gaurav (Sukant Goel), has risen from a place called Angola to be one of the directors of the company that is called Unicorn. Writer Yogesh Chandekar wants the audience to know a bit of geography and business terms to get a hang of Jayant’s rise. With the owner’s stylish but spoilt daughter Nishi (Akanksha Ranjan Kapoor) in his kitty, Jayant is unable to match his modest past with his opulent present where life feels like his machines that could be controlled through his smartwatch.

But life like Monica always has a different plan up her sleeve. She wants to blackmail Jayant, but even before he can decide, the techie discovers that he is not alone in this game. The owner’s son Nishikant (Sikander Kher) and accounts head Arvind Manivannan (Bagavathi Perumal) are also sailing in the same boat. The three hatch a plan and in turn, we get a coquette of a film that flirts with our emotions and teases our curiosity. At crucial junctures, Bala allows divine intervention to kick in. At one point, Bala literally shows the mirror to Jayant in between a beautifully-crafted scene. The sprinkling of multiple dialects by different characters with peculiar surnames makes the storytelling all the more flavourful.

Double XL w as released last week, but it is here as Monica, that Huma peddles an engaging story with a drool-worthy performance. As a dude who is almost reduced to a bystander by circumstances, Rajkummar once again aces a multi-dimensional part. His dance moves are as arresting as his deep look into the eyes of a cobra. Back to Netflix, Radhika, as a police officer, gets to deliver the truth of the story through some tongue-in-cheek dialogues. It is good to see yesteryear’s villain Shiva back in action as well. Be it Sukant, Sikandar, Akanksha or Zayn Marie Khan, everybody in the ensemble cast adds spice to the dark universe but actually, it is the writing that makes even the minor characters stand out and leave their scent.

The compositions of Achint Thakkar have the jazzy flavour of R.D. Burman and the lyrics by Varun Grover provide a sense of human greed and the ephemeral nature of life in a fun way.

At times there is an overdose of self-awareness and doffing of the hat, but Monica... is not to be missed.

Monica, O My Darling is currently streaming on Netflix

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Monica, O My Darling Review: Riveting!

Nasty surprises and quirky humour make Monica, O My Darling an intriguing, fun, watch, observes Sukanya Verma.

Few film-makers wink at their audience like Vasan Bala.

Fewer have the nerve to embrace their madcap energy.

A delightful discipline in his whimsical ideas is as certain as the element of surprise. But for all the nonconforming he subscribes to, Bala understands and uses music in the most traditional Hindi film sense.

Songs in our movies pave the way for dance and celebration.

But they are also the viewer's most intimate friends, letting us in on a character's untold desires, deceit and secrets.

Fittingly then, the title of his latest work is inspired by the most iconic line, Monica, O My Darling of Caravan 's most sizzling song, Piya Tu Ab Toh Aaja .

It's not the first time someone's doffed their hat at the feverish melody, but the trills and turns of Asha Bhosle's voice and Rahul Dev Burman's tune play a dramatic role in amping up that foreboding feeling before throwing everything off balance.

The rest of its orchestra-evoking soundtrack, especially Yeh Ek Zindagi by Composer Achint Thakkar and Lyricist Varun Grover, stay true to Bala's retro-revering aesthetic.

Movie references come naturally to his cinema-pickled head when pat comes the reply, ' aakhree raasta ', a casual introduction to 'my cousin Vinny' alludes to a Joe Pesci gem and if you listen carefully, Jalwa 's diabolic drone reserved for Dalip Tahil's hitman can be heard hovering above a character's demons here as well.

Exuberant reminders of the pop culture overabundance that Bala's first release Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota doled out, 'pop' up here as well.

Mostly though, it is the clockwork precision of Johnny Gaddar 's crime and timing it consciously emulates.

High on offhanded humour and nasty surprises, Monica, O My Darling evokes Sriram Raghavan and Coen Brothers.

Only here, the menace wears itself lightly and the wrongdoers come across as somewhat benign in their politics of scheming and self-interest. Like that unexpected moment of tenderness following a War of the Roses-intense, violent tussle between members of the opposite sex.

Set in Raghavan's Pune (though Monica, O My Darling 's Marathi identity rarely registers beyond surnames or locality), populated by moral ambiguity and dark deeds, Jayant Ardhekar (Rajkummar Rao), the freshly promoted engineer of a robotics firm, finds himself at the centre of a blackmail crisis that threatens to destroy his carefully crafted career and cozy relationship with the boss's daughter (Akanksha Ranjan Kapoor).

It's been a long, uphill climb from his modest Angola (sounds exotic!) days and Jayant is in no mood to lose any of it, especially after learning he's not the only one at the receiving end of the extortion threats.

A meticulously detailed (doodled, really) murder plot is drawn on board with a jittery colleague from the account's team (a pitch-perfect Bucks) and the boss's bullish, resentful son (a robust Sikandar Kher). But as the mood shifts from sinister to suspense, things invariably go south.

Where Huma Qureshi, as the titular, tantalising Monica, leaves us wondering about her darling or devil ways, Jayant's sister (Zayn Marie Khan) and brother-in-law (Sukant Goel), both employees in the same company as him, add to the guessing game.

Above all (as rolled out in the opening credits), there's Radhika Apte's eccentric, jokey cop ACP Naidu whose superstitious interjections, ' Somwar ko main sabpe yakeen karti hoon ' lend to her shady yet loopy persona.

Given that the prying, quirky detective is always reserved for the guys, it is nice to watch Apte deliver the sharps from a woman's perspective.

Based on the novel Burutasu No Shinzou by Japanese author Keigo Higashino (whose Devotion of Suspect X adaptation by Sujoy Ghosh is already underway), Monica, O My Darling 's neo-noir gets its grim kicks out of ruthless go-getters, master manipulators, underhanded perpetrators, entitled elites and slithery opportunists.

What's exciting is not just the darkness they are capable of, but also how Bala and writer Yogesh Chandekar ( Andhadhun ) regularly pull their leg and give them a hard time.

Between zingers dipped in sarcasm -- Zimmedari toh uthayega nahi, phone utha -- and ophidiophobia finding its antidote in poet Kusumagraj's stirring verse, wit and wackiness go hand in hand.

Between appreciating the mirth of in-jokes 'Saleem's se khana mangaya ,' referring to Huma's family restaurant or marveling at the slickly choreographed one-on-one combat in a robotic workshop and Swapnil S Sonawane's whiskey hue frames, Monica, O My Darling refuses to commit itself to a specific genre.

But there's a downside to all the meta overload as well.

Apart from the ever reliable trio of Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi and Radhika Apte, nobody else gets any meat to bite on.

Shiva Rindani's Captain Zattack contribution never goes beyond a gimmick whereas the concerned sister, spoilt girlfriend and ignored childhood friend arcs get lost in its eagerness to quip, ' Tu chronology samajh' .

Dig deeper and an allegory for classism is still waiting to be discovered, but for Monica, O My Darling, anticipation is far more rewarding than arrival.

Monica, O My Darling streams on Netflix.

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‘Monica, O My Darling’ review: Come for the murder mystery and stay for the cast

Vasan bala’s comedy-laced crime thriller is out on netflix..

Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota director Vasan Bala , tongue firmly in cheek and one hand ticking off a list of references to his favourite movies, is back with an entertaining crime thriller that’s more batter-fried than hard-boiled.

For the Netflix release Monica, O My Darling , the filmmaker has at his disposal a fabulous cast up for all manner of mischief and the opportunity to leap from cutting-edge technology to oozy pulp over the span of 129 minutes. The Netflix release has a lot of fun snaking this way and that, even though the joke might sometimes be lost on viewers.

Monica, O My Darling literally wears its heritage: a perfume is called “Notorious Noir Extreme”. The tribute to murder mysteries gone by from the likes of Vijay Anand , the Coen brothers and Sriram Raghavan starts with the title, taken from the RD Burman song Piya Tu Ab To Aaja in Caravan (1971).

Monica (Huma Qureshi) is the darling of not one but at least three men, one of whom she says has left her pregnant. Among the candidates is Nishi (Sikandar Kher), the layabout heir of the robotics company where Monica works. There’s the company’s latest hire, robotics wunderkind Jayant (Rajkummar Rao). Jayant has shoved aside his childhood friend Gaurav (Sukant Goel) on his way up.

The company is Nepotism Central: Jayant’s sister Shalu (Zayn Marie Khan) works there, while Jayant is dating Nishi’s sister Nikki (Akansha Rajan Kapoor).

Finally, might Arvind (Bagavathi Perumal), the company’s dweeby accountant, be in line for daddyhood? A planned murder that will clean up the matter goes topsy-turvy, scattering the characters hither-tither as rough-talking police officer Naidu (Radhika Apte) takes charge.

Events play out in Pune, the unlikely site of murky adventures in Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun (2018). The story and script by Yogesh Chandekar (also one of Andhadhun ’s writers) takes its cue from Naidu’s advice to a suspect: rather than coming up a perfect backstory, leave a few strands loose to avoid suspicion.

There’s plenty of activity on the screen and off it. If the brain has to keep track of a series of hairpin bends, the eye is guided towards cinematographer Swapnil S Sonawane’s lush visuals and the ear has to accommodate renditions of Piya Tu Ab To Aaja and Achint Thakkar’s self-consciously retro score. What’s this, Crime Patrol Pune , asks last-word freak Naidu.

The identity of the plot’s chief tormentor is scarcely a matter of suspense. The staccato narrative includes shifting loyalties, two winking cameos, and a few too many strands to straighten out. The grace notes in the cacophony include a welcome lack of moralising, a cheerfully wicked tone, and the amiable cast.

Rajkummar Rao’s superbly judged amoral climber is the star of the show. Finally handed a part that matches his protean talent, Rao easily towers over most of the cast.

Sikandar Kher’s “dynamic appearance”, as it is aptly billed in the opening credits, suggests that this contemporary actor fits right into the 1970s milieu in which the film’s makers dunk their ideas. Radhika Apte gleefully chomps hard on her character requirements, which include evil laughing.

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Monica, O My Darling Review: A Rollicking Ride Through the Movies

Director: Vasan Bala

Writer: Yogesh Chandekar

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Zayn Marie Khan, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Sukant Goel, Sikandar Kher

The running time of Monica, O My Darling is a little over two hours, but it took me three hours to complete the new Netflix thriller. There were no loo breaks or domestic distractions involved; on the contrary, my eyes never left the screen. The truth is my old VHS-tape habits emerged: I spent a majority of the film pausing and replaying moments. Not because I was scanning a colourful murder mystery for carefully planted clues – it had nothing to do with the plot. It had nothing to do with the countless Easter Eggs and retro hat-tips either. The reasons are purely sensory. It’s just…fun to watch. It has something to do with – to quote director Andrew Dominik – the “musicality of film”. This musicality was once inherent to the beats of a Bollywood potboiler, but it’s a forgotten art in modern Hindi cinema. Several scenes in Monica, O My Darling , like any great song, reclaim the harmony of timing and tone. A dance move here. A turn of phrase there. A slow-mo entry shot here. An erotically clumsy scuffle there. They simply summon a feeling, a finger-snapping rhythm that’s difficult to resist. The movie comes at us from this space, where narrative style doubles up as visceral substance.

That’s the thing about director Vasan Bala. His cinephilia – which shaped Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (2018) and even the screenplay of Bombay Velvet (2015) – is not that oversmart, spot-a-reference sort of cinephilia reserved for geeky cinema warriors. It’s not intended to be a yardstick of how much he knows. Instead, it’s a measure of how he lives – and how much he understands. It’s a chip off the old Sriram Raghavan block: Affectionate, personal but guided by method rather than madness. Take his choice of source material here. Monica, O My Darling is an adaptation (by Yogesh Chandekar) of Japanese mystery novelist Keigo Higashino’s Burutasu no Shinzou , a whodunit revolving around the human employees of a robotics company. The protagonist is star engineer Jayant (the persuasive Rajkummar Rao), the future son-in-law of the CEO who discovers that his secret lover – a saucy secretary named Monica Machado (an electric Huma Qureshi) – is triple-timing him with two other colleagues: Son of CEO, Nishikant (a hilarious Sikandar Kher), and married accountant Arvind (Bucks). When Monica uses her pregnancy to blackmail them for money, the three unlikely allies join forces to get rid of her. But once their plan for the ‘perfect murder’ goes awry, the film barrels towards dark-curveball territory – featuring a spate of strange murders, an unknown killer, an eccentric cop (Radhika Apte), and a setting where everybody and nobody is a suspect.

On paper, this premise is playful and genre-friendly. But it also has a twist that’s more of a statement than a revelation – a commentary on Parasite- style class rage and, if one digs deeper, the moral tragedy of being an outsider. It’s meant to be a reminder, not a surprise. Yet, when viewed through the prism of Bala’s free-flowing cinephilia – from the title and tropey character arcs to the vintage opening credits (“And Above All”) over a cabaret number; from an eerily authentic Seventies-inspired soundtrack to the nods to Psycho (1960) – Monica, O My Darling recalibrates life as an expression of the movies we love. But not in a way one might imagine. It likens the social hierarchies of living to the social ladders (and snakes) of narrative fiction. This film implies that, just as mega corporations overlook the value of lower-level workers, or just as elite households grow blind to their own privilege, elaborate movie plots tend to neglect the agency of their fringe players. The identity of what we see – the deaths, deceit, drama and the protagonist’s rollercoaster ride – often consumes the identity of what we don’t see: the aspirations of vamps and sidekicks, the reaction shots, the inconspicuous blue-collar faces who operate the machines that might replace them.

For instance, Jayant is so preoccupied by his own rags-to-riches journey that he barely notices – or suspects – those beyond his immediate eyeline. The writing cements his illusion as the primary story. He is resented by the supporting characters of his life, the ones relegated to the sidelines of such movies. Like unapologetic gold-digger Monica: “You’re not talented, your story is good”. Like bitter rival Nishikant: “Unlike you, I don’t have any garbage to get out of”. Or even like investigating officer Naidu: “Seasoned criminals never use ready-made backstories”. As a result, in his own head, Jayant is on the brink of emulating all those famous noir strivers – from Andhadhun’s (2018) Akash and Gehraiyaan’s (2022) Zain to Johnny Gaddaar’s (2007) Vikram and Baazigar’s (1993) Vicky Malhotra. He feels entitled to a few lapses of judgment, evident from the manner he nearly confesses to his affair by using his sad childhood as a prelude. He treats his small-town roots like an irritating mosquito; his behaviour with his sister, Shalu (Zayn Marie Khan), is dismissive at best. He never considers the possibility that she, too, is a parallel story.

But Monica, O My Darling bursts the genre bubble. It cushions the blow of a blunt twist by asking: What about the stories hijacked by selfish protagonists? The film actually opens with a seemingly unrelated incident in the robotics lab. You can tell that this is the original narrative, until a six-months-later cut reduces it to a footnote in Jayant’s flashy journey. He has, in a way, stolen the limelight. The rest of the film is defined by the invisibilization of the opening narrative – and its ability to hide in broad daylight. (Leopards and cobras make cameos, almost as though the killer were flaunting nostalgic mediums of murder in the face of a corrupt robotics company). The killer even appears in the second act, ending the mystery long before the climax, only to be perplexed by the fact that his/her presence fails to influence the flow of the thriller. Most movies are determined by the search for a murderer; here, the murderer is determined by the search for a film.

It’s a neat trick, because it lends context to a secondary cast composed almost entirely of ‘marginalised’ actors. There’s Sikandar Kher, who is wasted in Hindi films despite being the most versatile comic performer in years. There’s Sukant Goel, who is yet to transcend his image as “that crazy guy in the Dibakar film”. There’s Faisal Rashid, the “other journalist of Scam 1992 ” who plays this film’s solitary Muslim character and, hence, the company fallguy. There’s Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, the backbone of Guilty (2020) but not its star. And above all, there’s Shiva Rindani – perennial retro-Bollywood sidekick/ henchman/ brute/ comedian and Hum’s (1991) iconic Captain Zattack. Jayant’s view of them reflects their peripheral presence in an industry that is yet to perceive them. It also reflects the fringe status of the film’s location (Pune) in a genre that rarely thinks beyond metropolitan cities.

Shiva Rindani brings to mind Nineties’ contemporary Adi Irani, the actor who played the ‘real’ Vicky Malhotra in Baazigar . Irani’s Vicky is the clingy childhood friend that Shah Rukh Khan’s anti-hero refuses to recognise after stealing his story and marrying into wealth. Back then, he receded into the background as a betrayed Panvel resident with a drinking problem. But the middle-class Maharashtra of today is a different place. There’s no better metaphor for the mainstream machinations of Monica, O My Darling. Much like a Sriram Raghavan thriller, it implies that whodunit noir is rooted in the cultural language of storytelling rather than the story itself. It’s never about the suspense of who did it; it’s about the shock of learning that anyone is – and should be – capable of doing it. That’s musicality, too. A single note alters the flow of the film, yet your feet don’t stop tapping.

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‘Monica, O My Darling’ Review: Vasan Bala Delivers One Of The Best Indian Neo-Noir Thrillers

There’s no saying when it was established that November is the month to celebrate the noir genre. Maybe it’s the chilliness in the air or the reduced daylight hours that evoke a sense of mystique and urge people to watch murder mysteries full of shadowy cityscapes, femme fatales, and gut-wrenching twists. Hence, for these 30 days, you will see everyone from “The Criterion Channel” to “Letterboxd” suggesting the darkest, seductive, and pulpiest movies made by Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Wise, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Akira Kurosawa. But, as far as my knowledge goes, there’s a dearth of such films in India. We’ve got some great ones in the form of “Johnny Gaddaar,” “Manorama Six Feet Under,” “Kaminey,” “Raman Raghav 2.0,” and “Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!” and that’s about it. Thanks to Vasan Bala and Yogesh Chandekar, we can add “Monica, O My Darling” to this small but quality list.

Based on Keigo Higashino’s novel, “Burūtasu no Shinzō,” “Monica, O My Darling” starts off with the murder of Dev (Shiv Chauhan) that’s committed by Gaurav (Sukant Goel) after he learns that Dev is about to marry the love of his life, Shalu (Zayn Marie Khan). The narrative jumps forward by six months to the 50th anniversary of Unicorn Robotics, where the head of the company, Satyanarayan Adhikari (Vijay Kenkre), inducts Jayant (Rajkummar Rao) into the board of directors. This irks all the potential candidates for that position, i.e., Arvind (Bagavati Perumal), Tamang (Shiva Rindani), and Adhikari’s son Nishikant (Sikandar Kher). The other reason why everyone’s jealous of Jayant is that he’s dating Adhikari’s daughter. But Jayant has his eyes on Monica (Huma S. Qureshi), who reveals that she’s pregnant with Jayant’s child. While reeling from the shock of this information, Jayant finds out that Monica is using this tactic to blackmail both Nishikant and Arvind too. So, they concoct a plan to get rid of Monica once and for all.

What I’ve just described comprises only the first 30 minutes of “Monica, O My Darling,” thereby leaving you with around 1 hour and 30 more minutes of plot twists, near misses, and tense confrontations. Just saying that the script is “funny,” “intriguing,” or “a blast” will be an understatement because writer Yogesh Chandekar has done more than that. It seems like he has taken the aforementioned novel, consumed all forms of noir (classic noir, neo-noir, slacker noir, etc.), and then passed it through a Maharashtrian setting to give us an authentically Indian viewing experience. Hence, you have all the aspects that are synonymous with the genre, i.e., murder, jealousy, conspiracy, a femme fatale, adultery, lies, and a police officer (ACP Naidu, played by Radhika Apte) who is trying to untangle this mess. But these elements are expressed in such relatable ways. The rawness of the corporate politics, the awkwardness of the romance, the sexism in the atmosphere, and the murderous streak running through all these characters are palpable and seem like things we see in our everyday lives. And that makes the narrative an apt mixture of real-world tribulations and something that’s too wild for us to comprehend.

“Monica, O My Darling” marks Vasan Bala’s return to feature film direction after 2018’s amazing “Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota,” and it is a spectacular return. One of the many reasons why his return feels so satisfying is because it fulfills a certain kind of craving in terms of visual storytelling. Most Bollywood films from the past few years have turned out to be incredibly unimaginative and lacking in creativity when it comes to crafting an enriching viewing experience. Filmmakers are happy with blandly informing the audience what they want them to know and moving on to the next scene. But that’s not Bala’s style. He unpacks an exposition-heavy scene by showing us exactly what a character is imagining. He uses extreme close-ups and dolly zooms for pivotal revelations. Sometimes he stages a fight in the most visceral way possible to convey the hesitation and anger the characters are feeling. Other times he withholds information by concealing the entire fight to keep us on the edge of our seats. And, with the help of his overly efficient team, which includes cinematographers Swapnil S. Sonawane and Sukesh Vishwanath, editor Atanu Mukherjee, composer Achint Thakkar, and more, he seamlessly shifts from dark comedy to action to sci-fi to horror to suspense without drifting away from the film’s overarching style or substance.

Huma S. Qureshi, Rajkummar Rao and Radhika Apte are on the poster of “Monica, O My Darling.” And if you know anything about their filmography, you know that it’s expected of them to blow us away. But, recently, the kinds of projects they were choosing weren’t utilizing them properly. Under Vasan Bala, the trio really gets to shine. You see how subtle Rao can be when his character cannot reveal his true intentions and how over-the-top he can be when his character just can’t keep it together. Qureshi switches so elegantly between sophistication and utter crudeness while holding onto that undercurrent of vulnerability. Apte is clearly having so much fun antagonizing everyone in her vicinity. Her maniacal laughter is way too infectious. The supporting cast of “Monica, O My Darling” is spectacular as well. Bagavathi Perumal (or Bucks), Sukant Goel, Vijay Kenkre, Zayn Marie Khan, Sikandar Kher, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Faisal Rashid, Shiva Rindani, and Devendra Dodke are truly excellent. In addition to them, every single actor that appears on the screen for even a second is so good that you are never taken out of the experience. Be it the newscaster or the snake charmer; everyone is doing a little more than hitting their marks, thereby heightening the realism of the film.

“Monica, O My Darling” is undoubtedly one of the best movies of the year. On the surface, it’s a pretty straightforward neo-noir thriller filled with excellent performances, foot-tapping numbers, and interesting visual storytelling that harkens back to the aesthetic of Bollywood films from the ’70s and ’80s. But if you dig a little deeper, it’s about the complacency that comes with nepotism. It’s about how ambition can sometimes become toxic. It serves as a commentary on how so-called modern cities have a clear insider and outsider bias. And it talks about the lengths women have to go to and the professions they’ve to choose in order to acquire a grain of success or control over their own lives. And I am pretty sure there’s much more to it than that. So, do watch “Monica, O My Darling” on Netflix, talk about your theories on that cliffhanger ending (and what it means), and dance your butt off to “Yeh Ek Zindagi.”

See More: ‘Monica, O My Darling’ Ending, Explained: Who Was Behind All The Killings In Unicorn Robotics? Did Jayant Die?

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'Monica, O My Darling' movie review: A largely satisfying retro treat

A good mystery commands your attention and reinforces it in every direction possible. A handful of scenes into Monica, O My Darling , I was noticing everything, from the wifi password scrawled on Rajkummar Rao’s office wall to the way different paintings and knickknacks were arranged. Very little of this turned out to be information crucial to the film’s plot. Yet, the fact that I was noticing them seemed to indicate something in the movie’s favour. Often while reviewing Hindi films, I’m flipping furiously through my notebook to recall what a primary character or his wife was called. But with Monica, I can tell you precise surnames or which restaurant Huma Qureshi orders her dinner from.

Here’s the setup. Monica Machado (Huma) is a secretary at Pune’s Unicorn Group of Companies. She is also – as we soon find out – the squeeze of several of its employees, including robotics wunderkind Jayant (Rajkummar). An IITian who lucked out at one of those nerdy college fests, Jayant has worked his way up from the factory workshop to its board of directors. He’s young, ambitious, and toadyishly engaged to his boss’s daughter. Hailing from humbler stock — he gives his hometown as ‘Angola’ (like Unicorn, a fictive name) – Jayant can’t let his present life slip away. Naturally, he gets a fright when Monica announces to be pregnant with his child, and demands hush money for her troubles.

Turns out, Jayant isn’t the only toad in Monica’s talons. So he, along with company black sheep Nishikant (Sikandar Kher) and nervous accountant Arvind (Bagavathi Perumal), decides to bump her off. They make a plan, taking up roles for ‘Kill’, ‘Transport’ and ‘Dispose’, a plan so elaborate and circuitous you just know something will horribly go wrong. They also sign a ‘Murderers' Agreement’ for good measure, or rather, thumb-print it, a mild oddity that chimes nicely with the retro styling of this film.

Fans of director Vasan Bala’s second feature, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (2018), will instantly warm to the world of Monica, O My Darling . It’s not just the cameos or pop-culture references, though there are plenty of those to tide you over. The film’s use of music, right down to its centrepiece, ‘Farsh Pe Khade', a sardonic old-world number with Jayant hanging off a building wall, is very 'Mard'. Yet where Mard was heartfelt and expressive, Monica, O My Darling is strictly a fun genre exercise. It’s closer in spirit to the films of Vijay Anand, especially Blackmail (1973) and Teesri Manzil (1966), with their convoluted noir plots and smashing soundtracks.

Sriram Raghavan gets a nod in the opening credits; the screenplay, based on the Japanese novel Burutasu No Shinzou , is by Raghavan’s Andhadhun co-writer Yogesh Chandekar. That film, too, was a frenetic black comedy set in Pune. Radhika Apte, who starred in both Andhadhun and Badlapur , plays a zany cop here. In short, Monica, O My Darling belongs to a specific strain of Hindi filmmaking: Maharashtra noir, you can call it, or Raghavan-verse. Vasan brings his own quirk to the party, like introducing cinematic inserts to reflect the character’s innermost thoughts. As inventive as these ideas are, I wish he would learn to fly without them. A deadly scuffle in the second half need not have played out to the accompaniment of a teasing song (Raghavan, for instance, would play it entirely without music).

Jayant is a fascinating composite of multiple Rajkummar Rao characters from the past: you can draw a straight line from the desperate hustlers of Love, Sex Aur Dhokha and Ragini MMS to the studious stiffs of Newton and Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana to the well-dressed murder suspect in Judgementall Hai Kya . At one point, Jayant types out an e-mail and you can tell how hard he has worked to pick up the language of his bosses. Huma Qureshi efficiently portrays the resident seductress. The supporting players are thoroughly excellent, including Akansha Ranjan Kapoor as Jayant’s dewy-eyed fiancée Niki.

Radhika’s advice—“always leave the story vague”—goes unheeded in the film’s final stretch. The writers work doubly hard to tie up loose ends, which leads to a succession of minor revelations. Given how much of the danger has already dissipated from the script, they struck me as one-off jokes. Vasan, it must be added, is not a director particularly comfortable with gore. His characters may wear a perfume called Notorious Noir Extreme, but this film is Agreeable Thriller Moderate.

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Sikandar Kher, Radhika Apte, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Bagavathi Perumal, Sukant Goel

Streamer: Netflix

Director: Vasan Bala

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

(This story originally appeared on Cinema Express)

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Monica, O My Darling Review: Wildly Entertaining Neo-Noir Comic Thriller

Monica, o my darling review : rajkummar rao is never off the boil. huma qureshi fleshes out monica in all her splendour. radhika apte takes to the role of a chatty policewoman..

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Radhika Apte, Huma Qureshi, Sikandar Kher, Sukant Goel

Director: Vasan Bala

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 5)

Cups of tea have never been as portentous as they are in a sequence that plays out about an hour into in Monica, O My Darling. The eponymous character - a CEO's secretary - makes the chai for her boss and the company's chief tech developer. The latter baulks. He fears a deadly slip between the cup and the lip.

Director Vasan Bala and screenwriter Yogesh Chandekar inform this stray moment with a delicious mix of wit, wickedness and whimsicality that defines the neo-noir comic thriller as a whole. Full of knowing winks thrown the audience's way, Netflix's Monica, O My Darling , is a wildly entertaining film packed with twists and turns that keep on giving until the final fadeout.

It is delightfully tricksy, transfixing concoction that probes the goings-on in a Pune-based company, a veritable viper's pit where nothing is what it seems. The film taps the nuts and bolts of the genre and other necessary tools to produce a movie experience that, sometimes playfully and sometimes with a sudden grab at the scruff of the neck, pushes the audience into the innards of a moral black hole where people caught in a bind continually draw upon their wiles but find no way out.

Behind the manipulations and manic measures that the warped minds resort to, a privileged lot battle it out with the not-so-privileged who not only seek their pound of flesh but also figure out ways to get it.

Rajkummar Rao plays robotics expert Jayant Arkhedkar, a small-town lad who has wormed his way into the corporate charmed circle. Branded a pretender and a parasite by a rival within the company, he is drawn into a fiendish conspiracy that can only spell trouble. Determined not to have the rug pulled from under his feet, he sinks deeper and deeper into a dark rabbit hole.

Huma Qureshi is Monica Machado, the top honcho's secretary, a femme fatale who employs her guiles to hold her ground on a slippery slope. And Radhika Apte, given an "and above all" billing a la Pran in Hindi movies of another era, is ACP Naidu, wisecracks her way through the grind of policing.

Out here, the line separating the acceptable from the dubious is thin, nay non-existent. While those in the top echelons of the Unicorn Group of Companies fight to protect the cushy turf they believe they have deservedly earned for keeps, the "invisible people" - the male protagonist is acutely conscious of what it means to be one of them - chip away at the edges of an impenetrable power structure and look for a way in.

In this unseemly war, all is fair and there is little scope for love, not even between brother and sister. There are two sets of them in Monica, O My Darling . The CEO's slimy son Nishikant (Sikandar Kher) and his daughter Nikki (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor) make no bones about their hostility towards each other. Jay and his younger sibling Shalu (Zayn Marie Khan), also a Unicorn employee, are not exactly at daggers drawn but one is wary of the other at the best of times.

Aided by a terrific screenplay and a tremendous cast of actors, Vasan Bala assembles all that a twisted thriller should ideally have and then adds his own singular flourishes in the form of wonderfully organic, homegrown elements fuelled by an unbridled love for popular cinema and a sensibility that can turn familiar into fresh with minimum fuss.

Monica, O My Darling is a rare treat in the context of Bollywood, which does not have a genuine film noir tradition. Is this film as good as Ek Hasina Thi and Johnny Gaddar , the first two entries in the oeuvre of Sriram Raghavan, a writer-director to whom Vasan Bala acknowledges a debt upfront? The answer is yes.

Venomous cobras and lethal robotics have significant roles in Monica, O My Darling. That is hardly surprising considering what the film is seeking to project - humans that are as hazardous as reptiles and as machine-like as robots.

Monica, O My Darling begins with a prelude in which a murder is committed by a jealous lover (Sukant Goel) who takes manual control of a robot in Unicorn's tech lab and eliminates a co-worker who reveals his desire to marry Shalu. The casualty is blamed on an accident. Safety officer Faridi Baig (Faisal Rashid) takes the fall and loses his job.

The audience is aware of the identity of the man behind the machine, but none of the characters in the film has any way of knowing. How, six months on, they discover the many layers of truth, falsehood and subterfuge that begin to unravel as the company is rocked by a series of murders.

Jay has the ears of the ageing CEO Satyanarayan Adhikari (Vijay Kenkre). He also happens to be the boyfriend of the latter's daughter Nikki even as he has a fling with Monica. As things turn messier by the day, Jay faces the danger of being knocked off his pre-eminent perch.

This gentleman from the fictional village of Angola (it certainly isn't the central African country) is appointed to the board of directors and given a share in the company's profits. The move puts him in the crosshairs of his top management colleagues - the boss' disgruntled son, the CFO Arvind Manivannan (Bagavathi Perumal) and Tamang Rana (Shiva Rindani).

The biggest trouble for Jay comes via a pregnant Monica. Blackmail, a complicated murder plot and a well-laid plan gone awry lead to a series of deaths. Neither the audience nor the characters know if these murders are connected with each other or with the one at the start of the film.

The reveals are scattered across the entire film. Even when it is indicated who might be responsible for the rising body count, the guessing game and the surprises do not stop. In fact, the more the film discloses, the more steam it gathers. Nothing that is discovered or divulged as the plot unfolds is bathed in bright, clear daylight. Doubts persist even when the crucial cards appear to be on the table.

Cinephilia is the binding agent in Monica, O My Darling . Beginning with the Asha Bhosle song from 1971's Caravan that gives it its titles, the film makes many hat-tips to a wide spectrum of movie lore - from Bates Motel to Captain Zattack, a character in 1991's Hum played by an actor who is part of the supporting cast here.

Vasan Bala extracts top-notch performances from his actors. Rajkummar Rao is never off the boil as a chameleon driven by an instinct for survival. Huma Qureshi fleshes out Monica in all her splendour, a woman who revels in twirling men around her fingers. Radhika Apte takes to the role of a chatty policewoman who is always a step ahead of the rest like a fish to water.

The smartly off-kilter Monica, O My Darling , adapted from Japanese writer Keigo Higashino's 1989 mystery novel Heart of Brutus, is an intriguing, enthralling work that deftly turns pulp into a precious cinematic pearl. In short, it is a not-to-be-missed marvel.

• Cast Rajkummar Rao, Radhika Apte, Huma Qureshi, Sikandar Kher
• Director Vasan Bala

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Monica, O My Darling [2022] Review – Vasan Bala’s Nostalgia-induced mystery is a rambling mixed bag

The first thing you’d notice when you watch a Vasan Bala film is just how loaded it is with pop-culture subtext. Being only 2 films old (with the unreleased ‘ Peddlers ’ as his yet-seen debut), Bala is someone who has been in the industry for decades now. His previous film – the unique and stylish, but overall manufactured ‘ Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota ’ had me on the ropes with its over-reliance on self-reflective shenanigans. It was a fast-moving spectacle that used its campy inclinations to the extreme and threw everything on the wall to see what sticks. Sadly, ‘Monica, O My Darling’ is much of the same – a neo-noir that uses its quirkiness to shadow the way it is bound together. In that sense, it is like an inflated balloon that somehow gets pricked a little short of its messy third act and never truly manages to use its masterful second act to the best of its abilities.

Rajkumar Rao stars as Jayant Arkhedkar – a robotic expert who is the star of Unicorn Group. The film opens with Jayant finding a place on the Board of Directors of the company, with many other suitors right on the cusp of getting their due. From the offset (the prologue to be taken as an example) the film establishes ‘jealousy’ as one of the important aspects of the narrative. ‘Luck’ works as a subsidiary because, in spite of his very standard background, Jayant seems to have achieved a place of stature in the company and in life . This unwarranted progress has lifted Jayant’s career off the grounds, but with that comes trouble too. The trouble arrives soon when we are made aware of Jayant’s grey character. He is in a sort of forced relationship with Nikki Adhikari (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor) – the daughter of the head of Unicorn Group while cheating on her with the office secretary Monica ( Huma Quereshi ).

This facade that he is portraying comes right off when Monica declares that she is pregnant and Jayant is the father of her to-be child. She is not blackmailing him as she is a clog in the capitalistic cycle of exploitation; a strong-headed woman who wants to reverse the dynamic. She is looking for constant alimony from Jayant who now emerges as an insecure fellow not wanting to lose the success because he accidentally got into a fucked up situation and the ball hasn’t even started rolling for him yet. The plot thickens when he learns more about Monica – involving more players in this game of deceit. Nishi (Sikander Kher) – the elder son of Unicorn group’s owner and Arvind (Bagavathi Perumal) – the head of the accounts department also find them getting involved in a messed up situation that is about to unfurl like a pack of cards.

Monica, O My Darling borrows its title from the popular song from the 1971 film ‘ Caravan .’ The film, which among many other things is a direct throwback to the late 70s & 80s; especially the era of the Disco making its entry into Bollywood, is always eager to show up its pop-culture heady turns to you. From casual references to Hitchcock with ‘Bates Motel’ causally appearing in a sequence to the Psycho theme, this is a true Neo-Noir from the get-go. If the gray characters and their motives are not enough, Bala makes sure that he leads you on with a Johnny-good-time; a clip from Sriram Raghavan’s 2007 film plays in the background. Then there are cameos from Abhimanyu Dasani & Radhika Madan, where the latter literally stars as Supri (her character from Bala’s ‘Mard ko Dard Nahi Hota’); almost winking at the possibility of the manic energy of both the films coinciding in a VBCU (Vasan Bala Cinematic Universe).

All that aside, ‘Monica, O My Darling’ is a movie that actually works in parts. When the initial odd setup washes away, the movie turns the mystery over its head. Death is of course an important part of the game, but since Bala makes the game more about ‘who is killed’ or ‘who is going to be killed’ instead of ‘who is the killer,’ the second act turns into a hilarious whirlwind of commotion. The film thus becomes more about ‘hiding the secret’ instead of ‘uncovering the secret’ with Radhika Apte’s brilliant turn as the wise-cracking cop really amping up the thrills. The downfall of the film starts when the poison of the third act wrecks the flow.

Bala loses control of his proceedings and even though he keeps his self-reflective jargon of not forcing one’s hand onto a flawed story right there, the film dips into a slurry where characters start existing in a vacuum created by their own wrong-doings. While it doesn’t really hamper either the pace of the screenplay or the surprises to be had, the dynamic a viewer has with the people in his world starts to lose its grip until everything just becomes like a long series of exposition. It also doesn’t help that the lead played by Rao feels like a bland character who just walked into a delicious dish and never figures out which ingredients really make it stand out.

However, props go out to Achint Thakkar, who composed the music for the film. His soundtrack, which is penned by the incredible Varun Grover gives the film a luscious twist. Even though the score sometimes becomes bothersome and overbearing, the cue to the songs is really well done and helps you engage with this thriller a little better. Sadly, ‘Monica, O Darling’ doesn’t manage to use the sum of its parts to become a true blue noir like it claims to be.

Read More: Darlings [2022] Review – A dark comedy about a woman finding her own agency

Monica, o my darling (2022) netflix trailer.

Monica, O My Darling (2022) Movie Links – IMDb , Rotten Tomatoes Monica, O My Darling (2022) Movie Cast – Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Sikandar Kher, Bagavathi Perumal, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Zayn Marie Khan

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Monica, O My Darling Movie Review: A largely satisfying retro treat

Rating: ( 3.5 / 5).

A good mystery commands your attention and reinforces it in every direction possible. A handful of scenes into Monica, O My Darling , I was noticing everything, from the wifi password scrawled on Rajkummar Rao’s office wall to the way different paintings and knickknacks were arranged. Very little of this turned out to be information crucial to the film’s plot. Yet, the fact that I was noticing them seemed to indicate something in the movie’s favour. Often while reviewing Hindi films, I’m flipping furiously through my notebook to recall what a primary character or his wife was called. But with Monica, I can tell you precise surnames or which restaurant Huma Qureshi orders her dinner from.

Here’s the setup. Monica Machado (Huma) is a secretary at Pune’s Unicorn Group of Companies. She is also – as we soon find out – the squeeze of several of its employees, including robotics wunderkind Jayant (Rajkummar). An IITian who lucked out at one of those nerdy college fests, Jayant has worked his way up from the factory workshop to its board of directors. He’s young, ambitious, and toadyishly engaged to his boss’s daughter. Hailing from humbler stock — he gives his hometown as ‘Angola’ (like Unicorn, a fictive name) – Jayant can’t let his present life slip away. Naturally, he gets a fright when Monica announces to be pregnant with his child, and demands hush money for her troubles.

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Sikandar Kher, Radhika Apte, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Bagavathi Perumal, Sukant Goel

Streamer: Netflix

Director: Vasan Bala

Turns out, Jayant isn’t the only toad in Monica’s talons. So he, along with company black sheep Nishikant (Sikandar Kher) and nervous accountant Arvind (Bagavathi Perumal), decides to bump her off. They make a plan, taking up roles for ‘Kill’, ‘Transport’ and ‘Dispose’, a plan so elaborate and circuitous you just know something will horribly go wrong. They also sign a ‘Murderers' Agreement’ for good measure, or rather, thumb-print it, a mild oddity that chimes nicely with the retro styling of this film.

Fans of director Vasan Bala’s second feature, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (2018), will instantly warm to the world of Monica, O My Darling . It’s not just the cameos or pop-culture references, though there are plenty of those to tide you over. The film’s use of music, right down to its centerpiece, ‘Farsh Pe Khade', a sardonic old-world number with Jayant hanging off a building wall, is very Mard. Yet where Mard was heartfelt and expressive, Monica, O My Darling  is strictly a fun genre exercise. It’s closer in spirit to the films of Vijay Anand, especially Blackmail (1973) and Teesri Manzil (1966), with their convoluted noir plots and smashing soundtracks.

Sriram Raghavan gets a nod in the opening credits; the screenplay, based on the Japanese novel Burutasu No Shinzou , is by Raghavan’s Andhadhun co-writer Yogesh Chandekar. That film, too, was a frenetic black comedy set in Pune. Radhika Apte, who starred in both Andhadhun and Badlapur , plays a zany cop here. In short, Monica, O My Darling belongs to a specific strain of Hindi filmmaking: Maharashtra noir, you can call it, or Raghavan-verse. Vasan brings his own quirk to the party, like introducing cinematic inserts to reflect the character’s innermost thoughts. As inventive as these ideas are, I wish he would learn to fly without them. A deadly scuffle in the second half need not have played out to the accompaniment of a teasing song (Raghavan, for instance, would play it entirely without music).

Jayant is a fascinating composite of multiple Rajkummar Rao characters from the past: you can draw a straight line from the desperate hustlers of Love, Sex Aur Dhokha and Ragini MMS to the studious stiffs of Newton and Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana to the well-dressed murder suspect in Judgementall Hai Kya . At one point, Jayant types out an e-mail and you can tell how hard he has worked to pick up the language of his bosses. Huma Qureshi efficiently portrays the resident seductress. The supporting players are thoroughly excellent, including Akansha Ranjan Kapoor as Jayant’s dewy-eyed fiancée Niki.

Radhika’s advice—“always leave the story vague”—goes unheeded in the film’s final stretch. The writers work doubly hard to tie up loose ends, which leads to a succession of minor revelations. Given how much of the danger has already dissipated from the script, they struck me as one-off jokes. Vasan, it must be added, is not a director particularly comfortable with gore. His characters may wear a perfume called Notorious Noir Extreme, but this film is Agreeable Thriller Moderate.

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Monica O My Darling Movie Review: Rajkummar Rao, Radhika Apte, Huma Qureshi serve a delicious murder mystery

Planning to watch rajkummar rao, radhika apte, huma qureshi's monica o my darling read the review before you decide..

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• Monica O My Darling is directed by Vasan Bala, and stars Rajkummar Rao, Radhika Apte, Huma Qureshi in key roles.
• The film is a neo-noir whodunnit murder mystery.
• It is streaming on Netflix.

Cast & Crew

Rajkummar Rao

Huma Qureshi

Radhika Apte

Release Date: 11 Nov, 2022

There is something about Vasan Bala films - be it Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota or the short from Ray titled Spotlight. While Spotlight was a lot modified from the original by Satyajit Ray and made quirky, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota was the perfect superhero film, with the one complaint against it being that it was slow in parts. But it looks like, with Monica O My Darling, Vasan Bala has cooked a delectable neo-noir whodunnit murder mystery, that gets better and better, and whose effect stays with you long after you have finished it all.

The film follows the life of Jayant Arkhedkar (Rajkummar Rao), a robotics genius, after he climbs the ladder and lands a great opportunity at his company. But even before we are introduced to him, we see something happen, and that sets the tone for the entire film. A series of murders follow in the ‘Unicorn Group’, where Jayant lands a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When all the fingers point at him, he must find out who the murderer is, and the clear involvement that he might have had with those who are dropping dead, and save himself from getting killed at the same time.

Much early into the film, audiences will know who might be behind the killings (or they might not guess). It is no robot science to find out- it is out there. Bala literally follows what his character, Inspector Naidu (played by Radhika Apte) says, “ Story ko dhila chhorne ka, usko tightly pakadne ka nahi (Story needs to be left a little loose, it shouldn't be held onto too tightly)." But he shows total control over the narrative that intertwines lust, greed, powerplay, love, jealousy, betrayal, and even class differences.

Watch the trailer here:

The best part about Bala’s films are the pop culture references that he makes. Well, one needs to watch minutely, but Monica O My Darling too, is laden with references. Just take the title of the film for reference. In fact, the song by RD Burman also plays a huge significance and keeps playing in the background in the most perfect way possible.

The film also combines the best possible cast, and Bala probably also extracts the best out of the actors in the film. At the centre of all the madness is Rajkummar Rao. If you are a Rao fan who has been disappointed with the kind of films that he is being made to do, or how the recent films have kind of failed to do justice to the immense talent that the man has, then you must watch Monica O My Darling. Rao is perfect as Jayant, the underdog who has now become the ‘beta’ for the CEO of the company he is working for. He is also in love with the CEO’s daughter. He is needed to show a range of emotions, and he proves to be a chameleon.

There is also Huma Qureshi as Monica, the lady who will soon become a ‘bacche ki ma’. But throughout the film, you’ll be wondering whose ‘baccha’ it is! Don’t worry, you’ll find the answer. She nails her role and can change from sensuous to casual in seconds. She infuses a rawness to her character and elevates it so well. Radhika Apte has a limited role as the whacky cop, whose joviality is scary. Sikandar Kher deserves special mention as the entitled son of the boss. While he has just a few frames to him, he is too impressive with his casualness. There is also Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Zayn Marie Khan and, of course, Sukant Goel.

The frames of the film are beautiful. It will make you just pause and watch them again and again. And the background music heightens the impact that the narrative has. So long after the film has ended, it will still remain in your hearts.

This one definitely is unmissable, especially if you like Vasan Bala’s kind of films and have a knack for the pulpy, the ‘notorious noir extreme’, because that’s the perfume that lingers on after the film. Published By: Zinia Bandyopadhyay Published On: Nov 11, 2022 --- ENDS --- ALSO READ: | Monica O My Darling to Khufiya: Netflix announces its new slate of Indian series and films

Monica, O My Darling (2022)

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Monica O My Darling Review : A clunky thriller that loses steam midway

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Monica O My Darling movie review: This Rajkummar Rao film tries too hard to impress

Monica o my darling review: rajkummar rao, huma qureshi, radhika apte's performances aren't enough to save this vasan bala thriller..

A neo-noir, crime comedy thriller that also doubles up as a murder mystery, Monica O My Darling isn't your usual Bollywood commercial potboiler. Or at least that's what you'd like to believe until you actually sit through and watch this 2-hour-10-minutes long film and realise that it's so Bollywoodised that you just can't get over the plot twists and predictability of events, which make this Vasan Bala directorial a fun yet average watch. Average because the moment it was revealed at the film's teaser launch that Andhadhun director Sriram Raghavan was to helm the film but Bala took over after five years, one expected a similar experience. Unfortunately, despite having Raghavan's flavour throughout, Monica O My Darling doesn't even come close to Andhadhun's magic. (Also read: Uunchai movie review: A heartwarming tale of friendship and loss)

The story revolves around Jayant Arkhedkar (Rajkummar Rao), a robotics expert and an ambitious young man, who is dating Nikki (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor) hoping that one day they'd marry and he would rule Unicorn group owned by her father Satyanarayan Adhikari (Vijay Kenkre). Even after a promotion that upsets Nishikant Adhikari (Sikander Kher), it's not a smooth road for Jayant, as he gets into a fling with company's secretary Monica Machado (Huma Qureshi). Little does Jayant know that he's not the only prey Monica has her eyes on. She continues to blackmail Nishikant and company's account team member Arvind (Bagavathi Perumal). How these three plan Monica's murder and instead land in a conspiracy themselves is what forms the crux of the film. Then enters ACP Naidu (Radhika Apte), who takes her own sweet time with the investigation thus making it evident that there's more to what meets the eye.

An adaptation of Japanese novel Burutasu No Shinzou written by Keigo Higashino, Monica O My Darling has all the ingredients of a perfect suspense thriller but sees a major setback in the execution department. After a rigorous build up in the first half, the film nosedives after the interval with murders without any logic happening at a speed that's difficult to fathom. Moreover, too many back stories might help take the story forward but after a point, they all start to look confusing and you don't know what to really focus on. And I don't see a point in making a film so predictable that the number of scenes and twists that you can predict actually make you want to give yourself a pat on your back. I don't know what the makers were thinking while writing those portions. I mean are they really doubting audience intelligence or making it way too easier for their story to unfold? Only they would know.

While Bala's direction falters at places, Yogesh Chandekar's story manages to keep you hooked for most part. The narrative has the perfect pace but it's hit by way too many roadblocks on the way, resulting in a bumpy ride. Dialogues that Bala has co-written with Chandekar are quirky, peppered with comic tone, perhaps the high point of the film that can qualify as a dark comedy. I particularly liked the sequence when the men are planning Monica's murder. Oh yes, they sign a murderer's agreement also. Of course, even killers can't trust each other.

Performances aren't too over-the-top but still impress. Rajkummar is back in form and how. He is fabulous in the first half but shows some inconsistencies in the second half, he owns every frame he appears in. Huma puts her best foot forward and this, can be among one of her best performances. Comfortable in her skin, she absorbs the character to the T. Radhika, in whatever limited screen time she gets, does effortless justice to her not-so-easy role. I loved the way she brings her own quirks to the scenes and makes for quite a likeable cop character. Sikander and Akansha are good in their parts though I was a bit surprised to see Sikander's role, despite being pretty good in what he did, being reduced to just a cameo.

To say that Monica O My Darling is a family entertainer and that all movie goers would like it would be assuming a bit too much for it will have select takers. And the way makers have taken a risk by keeping somewhat open ending will leave many confused to say the least. Well, after all, not every suspense thriller and a murder mystery can turn out to be award-winning Andhadhun. With Monica O My Darling, slightly better direction in terms of where the story is headed and how it was narrated could have helped its case.

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