Aakhri Sach Review: The first two episodes shed new light on the infamous Burari death case, but miss out on the gripping intensity a topic like this deserves

In our Aakhri Sach review, we talk about how graphically triggering the show is and yet how it’s begun on an average start!

Aakhri Sach review: The Burari death case shook the whole nation 5 years ago. The first time all of us heard about the fact that an entire family committed suicide together, it gave us goosebumps all over. Why would 11 people do something like this with not even one of them questioning or stopping it? How was something like this even possible? This was what had everyone so addicted to this case!

The first two episodes of Aakhri Sach begin unraveling the story that’s been discussed from every angle possible. Anya (Tamannah Bhatia) is assigned the horrifying case. She is the best from the team and is known to think on her feet. When she enters the house, she is taken aback to see all of them hanging from the ceiling as it’s a case she had never seen before in her entire career. Even though she is astonished, she still manages to observe things at the crime scene that people like us usually wouldn’t. For instance, how the stools were pushed back in a certain way, who probably struggled to survive, who didn’t, her mind was constantly churning. She further conducts a routine investigation with the remaining family and friends of the victims. But one person in particular stands out - one of the girls who died, Anshika’s fiance, Aman (Shivin Narang), who looks rather restless when called in for questioning. 

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Episode 2, starts digging into the family more than the media and cops. While Anya is conducting an investigation of her own, Aman too is trying to get to the bottom of the truth in his own way. The only surviving member of the family, Bhuvan (Abhishek Banrejee)'s eldest sister, tells Aman about the family’s traumatic past. How Bhuvan was greatly affected by his father’s death as he felt he was partially involved in it. His history with Daulat ji, his father’s best friend whose shop he worked at and the incident that took place there which resulted in losing his speech for a long time.

Bhuvan’s father’s death really was the root cause of all the trauma that followed and the fact that Anshika’s fiance was also trying to reach to the truth were the two new things we learnt through the first two episodes of the series. Apart from this, the show so far had nothing to tell us that we didn’t already know. Netflix’s docu series last year called ‘The House of Secrets’ dived into this case intensely and discussed all the wild theories that made this case so sensational. We already knew so much of it because of the documentary that it’s a given that the show will struggle a bit in terms of keeping us hooked and there will be a constant comparison with the documentary. 

Abhishek Banerjee as Bhuvan (Lalit in real life), the man who manipulated the whole family, has an aloof, ghost-like feel to him which does scare you every time he is in frame. Tamannah Bhatia as the cop has a lot of scope to shine in this series further if the story is shown from her perspective and how she solves the case. The scene where she first enters the house and sees all the dead bodies is rather graphic. It starts with showing just their legs, as they do in the documentary as well but the show makes it more triggering by revealing their faces as well. Especially when Anya turns back and Bhuvan’s dead body is staring at her from the ceiling. That’s probably the only jump scare moment in the series so far. 

Production design wise, the show builds the exact same house as the real one but when it comes to acting, a lot of the supporting cast falls short and feels caricature like. Especially Tamannah’s entry scene along with Pratik Sejpal felt quite unnecessary and not well executed. And a case like this which was extensively covered by the media and anyway had the people’s attention, deserves a binge watch kind of nature to it. Where we, as an audience, can watch episode after episode so it even feels like we’re in the same zone as we were last year with the docu series. Releasing it as one episode per week might not have been the wisest decision given that the interest in it can be lost soon. 

The first two episodes of Aakhri Sach are streaming on Disney+Hotstar!

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