Santosh is a grim experience that offers exactly one moment of levity. It’s a memorable one, sure to extract the sort of whoops that one might expect in a screening of Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again. But unlike the Cop Universe, which often excuses and celebrates police brutality, Suri’s film tries to understand it. Santosh allows you to believe that it is an empowerment tale, but this is merely a facade that it has adopted. Much like the figures of authority that surround us, projecting virtue and sincerity. In stark contrast to the majority of male-driven mainstream films about cops, Santosh isn’t in awe of its protagonist. It is, first and foremost, a character study about a grieving woman trapped in institutions designed to suffocate her and everybody else. But it is also a cracking crime film, determined to explore the communal divides that have crippled our country.
Rohan Naahar of The Indian Express described the film as "a step above" Netflix’s earlier music-focused documentaries but "faintly damning", arguing that it makes only a half-successful attempt to dissect the "myth and mystery" around Honey Singh and is constrained by its closeness to the artist.
But while Jacqueline butchers the Hindi language, director Shirish Kunder displays a flagrant disregard for the language of cinema. Mrs Serial Killer has some of the worst greenscreen work I’ve ever seen, and Kunder’s idea of symbolism seems to be restricted to arranging a piece of rope to look like you — the viewer — are being flipped off. And that’s the overall emotion that Mrs Serial Killer leaves you with. Not only does it disrespect your intelligence, it pretends --for a brief time towards the end -- that it has been in on the joke all along. It has none of the tongue-in-cheek chuckles that producer Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na did, but is, instead, a strong contender for one of the worst films of 2020.
