Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa Review: A Sharp Whydunnit That Exposes Toxic Friendships & Human Frailty
Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa (2026, dir. Rajat Kapoor, streaming on ZEE5) is a sly, slow-burn whodunit that feels less like a puzzle to solve and more like an uncomfortable group therapy session with cocktails and a corpse. At just under 100 minutes, it gathers a tight ensemble of friends and family at a picturesque old mansion in the hills for a 10th wedding anniversary celebration. By morning, the most abrasive guest of all—Sohrab Handa (Vinay Pathak)—lies dead with his throat slit, and suddenly the polished surface of “everybody loves” cracks wide open.
The premise is classic locked-house mystery: everyone had means, opportunity, and—crucially—motive. Sohrab is loud, foul-mouthed, politically incorrect, and brutally honest in the way that only someone who enjoys wielding truth as a weapon can be. He pokes at insecurities with surgical precision, cloaked in “just joking” humor that lands like a slap. Pathak delivers a tour-de-force performance that’s magnetic and repulsive in equal measure; you can’t look away from him, even as you understand why half the room might fantasize about shutting him up permanently. It’s not a cartoonish villain turn—it’s layered, human, and deeply uncomfortable.
Where the film shines brightest is in its refusal to play the whodunit game straight. The suspense is secondary; the real engine is the “whydunnit.” Rajat Kapoor (who also acts in the ensemble) peels back the layers of these upper-middle-class relationships with a quiet, observational eye. Beneath the witty banter, the forced bonhomie, and the anniversary toasts lie decades of resentments, power plays, emotional abuse, and the casual violence we inflict on the people we claim to love. The non-linear structure helps reveal Sohrab not just as monster or victim, but as a product (and perpetrator) of the same dysfunctional ecosystem. It’s less Knives Out spectacle and more a chamber piece about how civility can mask cruelty.
The supporting cast is uniformly strong. Koel Purie brings raw volatility as Sohrab’s pill-popping wife. Ranvir Shorey, Saurabh Shukla, Neil Bhoopalam, Palomi Ghosh, and others fill the room with lived-in familiarity—people who know exactly how to hurt each other because they’ve been doing it for years. The dialogue crackles with sharp, naturalistic edge; these aren’t quotable one-liners but the kind of cutting remarks that feel painfully authentic to certain Indian social circles.
That said, the film isn’t flawless. As a pure thriller, it can feel slack in pacing—some viewers will guess the direction early, and the final reveal doesn’t deliver the jaw-dropping shock traditional mystery fans might crave. The tonal balance wobbles at times between dark comedy and somber character study, and not every thread lands with equal weight. It’s more interested in moral ambiguity and human frailty than tidy genre payoffs, which makes it quietly subversive but occasionally leaves you wanting a sharper emotional or narrative sting.
Still, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa lingers because it trusts its audience to sit with discomfort. It’s a moral tale, yes, but not a preachy one. It holds up a mirror to the small, daily toxicities we normalize in the name of friendship, family, and “keeping it real.” Vinay Pathak’s Sohrab becomes a grotesque yet oddly sympathetic figure—the bully who sees too much, says too much, and ultimately pays for the mirror he forces everyone to look into.
My Take: It’s not a perfect thriller, and it won’t satisfy everyone looking for edge-of-seat suspense. But as a nuanced portrait of how love and hate coexist in the same relationships, wrapped in smart writing and excellent performances, it’s gripping in its own understated way. Worth watching for anyone who appreciates character-driven drama that sneaks up on you and refuses to let go easily. 3.5/5.
If you like your mysteries messy, human, and more interested in why people break than who pulled the trigger, this one’s for you.
