A Death in the Gunj benefits from Konkona Sen Sharma’s perceptive, assured direction. It’s one of the best films of the year, and one that you’ll find hard to shake off in a hurry. I’m going with four out of five and a strong recommendation not to miss it.

Konkona Sensharma’s assured directorial debut, unpacks a complex sentiment with feeling, and gives us a layered film with memorable characters about the games people play, and how, sometimes, that can have terrible consequences.

Sirsha Ray’s camera work helps set a gloomy, mysterious, dark (not sinister) mood. The choice of locations and background scores does the rest. For the want of a better word, A Death In The Gunj has a ‘distinct’ feel.

Konkona Sen Sharma’s film is a successful experiment despite loopholes. And it is brave.

It is deeply engaging and like comfort food its memory and taste will stay with the viewers long after the credits role.

A Death In The Gunj is a chiselled gem of a film – as resplendent as it is sobering.

A Death In The Gunj will make you drop your jaw several times, except for the one time you’d really want it to: the climax.

Watch A Death In The Gunj for the gem of a first film that it is. It will let McCluskiegunj grow on you. It will make you laugh and silently crush your heart. It will make you thank the makers of the film for giving you this one.

Points A Finger At The Cruel Wolf Residing In Each Of Us…

Konkona Sen Sharma has proven she’s as good a director as she’s an actor. She’s kept a tight hold on every department, hardly making a false move. Looks like her new journey is going to be exciting as hell…

Bollywood desperately needs films like A Death in the Gunj — one that doesn’t take itself too seriously or isn’t easy to frivolously label, but yet doesn’t insult the intelligence of its viewer. We need to have a middle path between “artsy fartsy parallel cinema” and “mass masala entertainer”, and Konkona Sen Sharma seems to have found a way.

While the script written by Disha Rindani and Konkana Sen Sharma, is skilfully drafted giving every character equal weightage, there are moments that make it seem pretentious and predictable. But the last scene which works as a metaphor in the film, leaves a lot of scope for interpretations and discussions and that is what takes this film beyond the auditorium.

A Death In The Gunj is one of the most sensitive films ever made. It made me think about my childhood and my family. It makes you look around and see if you have deserted a loved one, especially when someone tried to reach out to you in their vulnerable times. I felt a knot in my stomach, fought tears as I walked to the parking lot, couldn’t sleep for next two nights and made sure I checked on my family and friends regularly. 
I don’t think I can ever say it enough, but please watch the movie whenever you get an opportunity; on the internet, on a plane or most deservedly on the big screen. 

“Death In The Gunj” has everything going for it as a film, and we hope that the niche movie breaks even as it releases alongside two Hollywood and four or five, mostly nondescript, Hindi movies on a crowded Friday. As a thriller, it ambles as placidly as a Jack Diickson Carr novel or an old-fashioned British story, and the climax is actually implosive rather than explosive.