Cheekatilo
Cast: Sobhita Dhulipala, Viswadev Rachakonda, Chaitanya Visalakshmi, Esha Chawla, Jhansi, Aamani, Vadlamani Srinivas, Ravindra Vijay
Director: Sharan Koppisetty
Rating: ★★.5
After playing the streetsmart Tara Khanna in Prime Video’s Made in Heaven, Sobhita Dhulipala is back on the OTT platform with a film this time. Her character, Sandhya Nelluri, is every bit as refreshingly Telugu as she is in Cheekatilo, a crime thriller with an interesting idea. However, in a bid to make social commentary on a sensitive subject, it inadvertently sends out mixed messaging. A film like this needed more sensitivity and nuance, but what we get feels performative.
Cheekatilo story
Sandhya Nelluri (Sobhita Dhulipala) quits a Neralu Ghoralu-style TV show to kickstart a podcast from a dusty room in her home. She wants to report crime with facts and sensitivity, instead of turning it into a spectacle for the audience. Poised to be married to her boyfriend, Amar (Vishwadev Rachakonda), Sandhya is on the precipice of happiness. Except, an incident from her past that most women can relate to still haunts her. And a serial rapist and killer seems as intrigued by her as she is by him.
Cheekatilo review
Cheekatilo banks on a heavy premise and explores the dark underbelly of how our country views sexual abuse and molestation. Now, while a film like this gets a protagonist who is personally invested in the case she’s exploring for various reasons, everything about it seems surface-level. Sandhya (and Sobhita) stays mostly straight-faced through some of the most heartbreaking situations, which makes it harder to connect with them. In fact, more than Sandhya, it is the other characters who seem to have more heft, including the killer.
Exploring the topic of abuse
Yes, Cheekatilo might be about catching a serial killer on the surface, but director Sharan Koppisetty does a good job at asserting that the real problem is how society brushes away, refuses to talk about or worse, enables abusers while silencing the victims. Sandhya gets a beautiful callback at the dinner table, where, after being asked to adjust to her circumstances, she learns to speak up. The expectations of everything from perfect victims to expecting survivors to speak up publicly are called out in their own way.
{{/usCountry}}Yes, Cheekatilo might be about catching a serial killer on the surface, but director Sharan Koppisetty does a good job at asserting that the real problem is how society brushes away, refuses to talk about or worse, enables abusers while silencing the victims. Sandhya gets a beautiful callback at the dinner table, where, after being asked to adjust to her circumstances, she learns to speak up. The expectations of everything from perfect victims to expecting survivors to speak up publicly are called out in their own way.
{{/usCountry}}However, amid all this, a closer look reveals problematic cracks. A powerful man threatens rape in front of a policeman, yet nothing comes of it. A character remarks that a woman is ‘lucky’ she is dead, unlike his loved one, who suffers with the aftermath of abuse. Cheekatilo even veers into the cliché of viewing women as goddesses rather than people, as Aigiri Nandini chants play in the background of a key scene. All this after multiple women wonder when they’ll be handed basic human dignity.
Even as Cheekatilo tells you that men can be victims of abuse too, it doesn’t save a single moment of grace for the survivor there. Instead, it's made to seem like the cycle of abuse is inevitable in some cases. In any other film, moments like these would not ring as loud as they do in Cheekatilo, unfortunately veering from the film's message.
The law of convenience
Cheekatilo also suffers from the ‘law of convenience’ wherein everything conveniently happens just to move the plot without putting in much effort. Sandhya is allowed to participate in a police investigation and is let off with a slap on the wrist for not following orders. An ex-boss conveniently agrees to help.
A key character conveniently moves around without being detected for years, with just a change of scenery saving them. Even the killings are methodically precise, complete with jasmine flowers and cow bells in some cases, and yet, mistakes are conveniently made. The only place this trope works is how, despite that, the killer is never caught.
In conclusion
Cheekatilo is a great start to having difficult conversations and a hard look at society that refuses to take accountability for enabling abuse. And while Sharan seems sensitive to this for the most part, there are moments when the film feels lacking in it. Sandhya gets the perfect closure to her journey by reclaiming a space she once felt unsafe in. Many others in the film don’t get that chance, and that’s unfortunately reality.
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