Netflix has chosen the grand stage of IFFI 2025 to unveil Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders, the follow-up to Honey Trehan’s acclaimed 2020 noir thriller.
And while the world premiere gives the film a prestigious launchpad, the sequel raises an essential question: does every strong standalone Hindi thriller now need to become a franchise?
The film marks Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s return as Inspector Jatil Yadav, now pulled into a chilling mass murder involving the powerful Bansal family of Kanpur.
The cast is stacked, Radhika Apte, Chitrangda Singh, Deepti Naval, Rajat Kapoor, Revathy, Ila Arun, and more, but so is the pressure to deliver something that feels necessary, not simply “more.”
Netflix’s official pitch positions the film as deeper, darker, and emotionally heavier than the original. Trehan speaks about raising the stakes, exploring conscience, and expanding the universe. But this is also the challenge: Raat Akeli Hai worked because of its intimacy, a single murder, a claustrophobic household, and a detective confronting his own demons. Sequels to noir mysteries rarely capture that same lightning. They either go bigger and lose the mood, or go broader and lose the soul.
The IFFI premiere signals confidence, but also expectation. As Netflix leans increasingly on sequels and extensions of familiar IP, The Bansal Murders becomes a test case: can a whodunnit rooted in silence, secrecy, and stillness survive franchise-scale ambition?
We’ll know on December 19, when Jatil Yadav returns not just to solve another case, but to justify why this universe needed to expand at all.
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