What defines a classic murder mystery? Is it the kind that refuses to be outsmarted? One that keeps disarming you, twist by twist, until its final breath? One that seduces you into certainty, only to undo it precisely when you’re most convinced? The answers, I suppose, are varied, deeply personal, even. But if I were to distil them all, I’d say it comes down to one thing: perception. The essence of a great whodunit lies not in its resolution, but in how it manipulates what you think you know. It crafts a perception so carefully, so convincingly, that when it shifts, is when the story earns its place among the classics. For me, the mystery isn’t solely linked to the text, to the “who” and “why” of the crime. In fact, the best ones let me forget there was a crime at all. The true gold standard lies in a narrative that transcends the scaffolding of genre, that rises above the bait of shock and delivers something more resonant. The murder, then becomes incidental, a catalyst for a deeper exploration. A larger story. A subtler thrill. In Hindi cinema, the last time I felt this emotional undercurrent disguised as crime — I found myself returning to Reema Kagti’s Talaash, and Honey Trehan’s Raat Akeli Hai. On paper, both couldn’t be more different in every which way. One is set in the maximum city of Mumbai, the other happens in the hinterlands of Uttar Pradesh. One is about the death of a film star, the other is about the death of the old patriarch of a family. One follows a cop clinging to the fraying threads of a broken marriage; the other about a cop eager to begin one. One slips into the supernatural by the time it ends, the other insists that the natural horrors of society are terrifying enough. One is led by what we call the superstars of a generation, Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerji, and Kareena Kapoor. The other is steered by actors of the generation, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte. Even in direction, one is helmed by the clinical Kagti, the other is led by the debuting Trehan. But still, whenever I watch one of them, I think of the other. Whenever I mention one, I have to mention the other. It is because, somewhere subconsciously, both are mirroring each other. It is because in both, the crime is never the real horror. It is the world around it which is inherently sexist.In that sense, one of the most striking similarities between the two lies in how both unfold as mood pieces, deeply linked with the image of the femme fatale. In each, the actresses embodying this archetype, Kapoor in Talaash and Apte in Raat Akeli Hai, continuously play with, and challenge, our traditional perceptions of what a femme fatale is. At first, they appear as mysterious, beautiful, seductive figures who captivate the investigating officers, Khan in Talaash, Siddiqui in Raat Akeli Hai. But what Kagti and Smita Singh (who wrote Raat Akeli Hai) do is give them the background, complexity and agency the genre has historically denied. They empower these women to move beyond the image, to step out of the frame that usually holds them. And in doing so, they become the driving force of both narratives.Also Read | Five investigative thrillers to watch before Raat Akeli HaiWhat’s remarkable is how Talaash gradually shifts into the story of Rosie. By the end, we realise it was hers all along. Like Suri, she too is searching for closure. But unlike him, her grief has never been centred. Her presence, though constant, was never prioritised. We never considered her the narrative’s subject because we were never conditioned to view her that way. And when the film circles back to her, we’re left re-evaluating not only what we saw, but how we saw it. The same holds for Raat Akeli Hai. We, like Jatil, observe Radha through a lens of suspicion. For most of the film, we are complicit in the assumption that she is hiding something, perhaps even the truth about the murder. But that gaze fractures when her real story emerges, and we come to understand that it was never hidden, it was simply never acknowledged. Her truth remained invisible, not by omission, but by design. Because neither the characters nor the audience was willing to see it.This is where these murder mysteries transcend their genre. They do not simply subvert expectations. But they indict the very mechanisms of perception that shape the genre. By foregrounding caste, class, and gender, and how they operate as forces of erasure, Kagti and Singh expose the genre’s historical myopia. They remind us that what is missing from view is often not what is absent, but what has been systematically overlooked. The other significant leap that both films take in their subversion of the femme fatale is how, in each case, the woman becomes the route through which the man arrives at a deeper understanding of himself. It is through them that their male counterparts come of age. It is through them they begin to see, not just the case more clearly, but also the world around them. In that sense, the resolution is not only about solving the murder, but about uncovering parts of themselves they might never have confronted otherwise. Perhaps that’s why even the titles of both films symbolise the journeys their characters undertake. An endless search for a sense of peace, for a fragment of themselves, in a night that offers neither comfort nor escape. Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd