India, Dec. 20 -- Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders on Netflix begins like a routine small-town mystery. However, soon enough it transmogrifies into something much more unsettling. A story about complicity and systemic corruption gradually emerges from what at first seems to be a family crime based on personal dysfunction. The latter is compelling, too, but nothing we have not seen before. Let's probe into Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders story and ending, which are both explained here.

Set around the brutal slaughter of the wealthy Bansal family inside their ancestral estate, the film follows Inspector Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui returning in the role). Like the best mystery stories, Yadav investigates a case that seems designed...