Nambiar directs with a restless, kinetic energy. The film is a sensory assault—glitchy editing, jarring sound design, a thrumming electronic score by Prashant Pillai and Ranjit Barot, and striking cinematography by Pankaj Kumar. The screen bleeds neon and shadow, mirroring the characters’ fractured moral compasses. But the style never feels empty. Every freeze-frame, every Dutch angle, every sudden cut to black amplifies the characters’ panic and the audience’s dread. The famous single-take sequence of the kidnapping gone wrong is a technical marvel that viscerally plunges you into chaos.

At its core, Shaitan follows five privileged, hedonistic friends in Mumbai: Amy, a volatile artist (Kalki Koechlin); KC, the cynical photographer (Gulshan Devaiah); Tanya, the reckless party girl (Shiv Panditt); Zubin, the golden-hearted rich boy (Neil Bhoopalam); and Dash, the drug-fueled wild card (Rajkummar Rao in a breakout role). When a night of drugs and drunk driving leads to a hit-and-run that kills a mother and child, they don’t turn themselves in. Instead, they stage a fake kidnapping—Amy as the hostage—to extort ransom money from her estranged, wealthy father.

Shaitan was not a box-office juggernaut, but it became a cult classic for a generation tired of cinematic pleasantries. It paved the way for more daring, morally grey narratives in mainstream Indian cinema. It launched Rajkummar Rao into the spotlight, cemented Kalki Koechlin as a fearless performer, and proved that Indian films could be both artfully experimental and ruthlessly entertaining.

What follows is a masterclass in escalating tension, as their “perfect plan” unravels into a blood-soaked nightmare of police brutality, betrayal, and psychological disintegration.

The film refuses to moralize. It doesn’t say, “Rich kids are bad.” Instead, it asks: When you have no limits, no consequences, and no real human connection, what’s left? The answer, the film suggests, is a vacuum that evil rushes to fill.

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