Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa

The real mystery isn’t about solving the case, but rather about figuring out the inner selves of each other by sheer accident, even if it doesn’t necessarily link to the murder. These interactions are messy, raw, and revealing, never losing steam. There is a lived-in quality to the dialogue, to how the ramblings run over each other in a spacious room full of people trying to be heard. The banter sounds real, including the forced incorporation of a few bad jokes because they are better than awkward silences. So many interesting conversations unfold that after a point it ceases to matter who killed Sohrab — yet the mystery remains, simmering underneath and never letting you off the hook. The narrative often risks capsizing while keeping track of too many characters, diluting its own impact as a thriller, but the conversations bring us back each time.

Rajat Kapoor's story is quite good and in the zone of classic murder mysteries. Rajat Kapoor's screenplay is captivating and very easy to understand. But it goes awry in the third act. Rajat Kapoor's dialogues are praiseworthy, especially the ones mouthed by Vinay Pathak. Rajat Kapoor’s direction is uncomplicated yet effective. Presenting a mystery of this nature is challenging, especially at a time when KNIVES OUT and several other films revolving around a murder and multiple suspects are still fresh in viewers’ minds. However, Rajat’s execution and writing stand out on several counts. To begin with, Sohrab Handa’s personality alone is enough to make his loved ones want to finish him off. Secondly, the psychological angle sets the film apart from others in the genre. The scene in which Chandra decodes the hidden equation shared by the guests purely through observation is especially memorable.

For Kapoor, who usually makes independent and unpredictable films, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa must feel like a palate cleanser between heavy courses.

This is less a conventional whodunit and more a slow, deliberate excavation of human nature, of the resentments, insecurities and quiet violences that simmer beneath seemingly civil relationships. The film uses the scaffolding of a murder mystery not to deliver shocks, but to peel back layers of its characters, revealing how fragile the idea of "love" can be when placed under pressure.

A classic whodunit setup, writer-director Rajat Kapoor's Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa thrives more on messy relationships than pure suspense.

The film, directed by Rajat Kapoor, has a strong premise with the ingredients of a classic whodunnit: a closed setting, complex character dynamics, and a murder disrupting a celebratory evening. Yet, the execution does not fully live up to this potential. The problem is the film seems more interested in the cracks than the murder itself. That's not entirely a bad thing. The best parts of the film are the quieter, messier moments, the awkward party chatter, the passive-aggressive digs, a game of Dumb Charades that somehow carries more tension than the actual investigation. Kapoor understands how people behave around each other when they'd rather not be in the same room, and that instinct works in the film’s favour in patches.

Quietly subversive and more interested in human frailty than genre payoffs, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa is a quintessential Rajat Kapoor film. It doesn't reinvent the whodunit, but it humanises it, turning a murder mystery into a mirror held up to the insidious violence we inflict on the people we claim to love.