Mrigaya: The Hunt

In the ever-thinning air of Bengali cinema where content is either borrowed or botched, Mrigaya: The Hunt crashes in like a self-important sermon disguised as a thriller. Billed as a gritty cop drama revolving around the murder of a Sonagachi-based prostitute, what we get instead is a muddled, pretentious, and painfully overacted excuse of a film that confuses loudness with intensity and melodrama with meaning.

The premise, though loosely inspired by a real case, is squandered by a screenplay that feels more like a stitched-together police diary than a compelling narrative. Debashish Dutta, an actual cop turned writer, might know how to file FIRs - but storytelling, clearly, is not his jurisdiction.

Ritwick Chakraborty as OC Debanjan Dutta walks through the film with a face frozen in righteous constipation. Vikram Chatterjee, supposed to bring youthful edge as SI Animesh, is so wooden you could carve a desk out of him. Anirban Chakrabarti, stuck in a role that demands intensity but offers none, ends up becoming a caricature of the brooding tough guy. Rezwan Sheikh as the Anti-Dowry officer? Blink and you'll miss both him and his relevance.

The female characters fare even worse. Priyanka Sarkar's Chhaya is underwritten to the point of invisibility, while Ananya Bhattacharya's Chameli/Annapurna is reduced to a set of stereotypes so tired, even the camera seems bored of framing her.

Director Abhirup Ghosh tries to sprinkle style - with unnecessary slow-mo shots, heavy background scores, and dimly lit interrogation rooms - but the film reeks of TV serial aesthetics dressed up in Netflix-wannabe clothes. The dialogues are cringeworthy, the twists are laughably predictable, and the so-called "hunt" feels more like a lazy stroll through a moral lecture.

By the time the film stumbles to its underwhelming finale, it's hard to care who killed whom - because the real victim here is pacing, nuance, and basic storytelling sense.

Verdict: "Mrigaya: The Hunt" is less a thriller and more a sluggish public service announcement, better suited as a police recruitment ad than a feature film. Avoid like a bad alibi.

⭐ 1 out of 5.

Mrigaya is an Insult to the Intelligence of Its Viewers. You buy your ticket expecting a fast-paced murder mystery. What you get is a slow, bloated, directionless drama that crawls forward like a broken-down tram. The promotional campaign promised a gripping whodunit. Instead, we got a "whocaresdunit" with all the thrills of an outdated news report.

Mrigaya promises a gripping whodunit - and then hands us a flat, bloated tale with all the suspense of a spoilt newspaper headline. It thinks it's clever. It's not. It thinks it's brave. It's not. It thinks it's a film. It's barely that. Audiences who walk in expecting a smart thriller will walk out feeling duped and drained.

This film didn't just miss the mark. It missed the entire shooting range.

This is not just a failed thriller. It's a betrayal of every viewer who showed up expecting quality content. The makers think showing four men in uniform brooding under flickering tube lights will automatically equal tension. It doesn't. It just equals boredom.

Verdict: Mrigaya doesn't reward you for watching. It punishes you for trusting it in the first place.

This thriller movie prove that bengali cinema can contribute a superb cinema in low budget,,, every action scenes, screenplay direction,bgm are all fantastic,,, 😊 great to write this review The director smoothly direct this flim and ending scene give goosebumps So if you are interested to watch a good suspense thriller action movie go and watch this movie ofcourse,,,sourav in this cinema has done a wonderful acting ,,all the characters are described perfectly anirban Vikram also done well ,ritwick Chakraborty has done very good and well as always,,sb milkar a mass masala suspense thriller action Bengali movie ___ review by Satanik Dey from Arambagh, Hooghly.

Watching Mrigaya feels like being trapped in a theatre workshop where everyone's told to act angry - all the time - no matter what the scene is. It's a 2-hour screaming contest punctuated by forced pauses and unnecessary glares. From the opening frame, Mrigaya feels like a theatre rehearsal gone rogue. Every actor seems to be in a personal competition of "who can overact the hardest." Ritwick Chakraborty appears to be stuck in a moral monologue loop, while Vikram Chatterjee channels the emotional range of a tax return form. Anirban Chakrabarti looks visibly embarrassed to be there, and the rest of the cast fade into either background noise or badly written cameos.

If acting was a crime, this film would deserve life imprisonment.

The real tragedy is that these are all good actors. The fault lies in the complete lack of direction. Every emotional moment is cranked up to eleven, making you feel nothing but fatigue. By the second act, it's hard to tell if the characters are chasing a killer or just performing a badly rehearsed college skit.

Rating: 0.5/5.