If life is a fleeting shadow, as some philosophers would have us believe, then what is death but the light that casts it? It is an absurdity, truly—this dance of life and death, two partners twirling endlessly in a waltz no one remembers beginning and no one knows when it will end. One would think that after centuries of pondering, we might have figured it out. Yet Killbill Society throws a spanner into that well-oiled machinery of existential contemplation.
Death, here, does not lurk in the wings, waiting for its cue to strike. No, in this world, death dons a tuxedo and winks knowingly at the audience—it doesn’t come to end the show; it makes you wonder why you were ever in the play in the first place.
It is from this pocket of existential stillness that Srijit Mukherji’s Killbill Society emerges—not as a thriller, not even as a satire, but as a dark, meditative chamber play about the people who’ve gone ghost long before the world writes their obituary.
At the centre of this parable sits Poorna Aich—a woman not unlike a Dickensian character, trapped in a life she has long since grown indifferent to, hanging by the thread of a quiet desperation after a scandal that sprawls over the city. Koushani Mukherjee’s performance is filled with the kind of fragility that makes it impossible to tell whether Poorna is still alive, or whether she is merely existing, exhaling life only because she hasn’t yet mastered the art of letting go. This is not a woman who cries for help; no, her silence is richer and darker. It is the silence of someone who has tried to beg for life but no longer knows how. She has simply stopped asking for more.
And then comes Mrityunjoy Kar. A man who carries death like a surname, and invoices it with bureaucratic poise. Parambrata Chattopadhyay plays him not as a killer but as an elegy in motion. His footsteps sound like closing doors. His face was unreadable—neither cruel nor kind, simply tired. He is death with a clipboard, a man who’s seen too many people pay the ultimate fee without so much as a receipt.
In a film that touches upon the very nature of existence and cessation, Mrityunjoy Kar’s name is a delicious pun on death itself—his very title, a reminder that we are all, in some sense, “on the way” to the final destination, as we go about our daily lives with all the urgency of a man late for a meeting that doesn’t exist. This darkly comic figure is not here to save anyone; he is here to show us the absurdity of our own salvation. We are all racing toward a finish line, yet the line is drawn in the sand by a hand we cannot see.
But this is no film about murder. It is about consensual endings. Poorna hires Mrityunjoy not out of rage or melodrama, but from a tired acceptance: not because life has betrayed her, but because life has… paused.
The chemistry between the two leads is refreshingly unsentimental. Poorna and Mrityunjoy don’t fall in love—they fall in recognition.
And yet, Killbill Society does not glorify death. That would be too easy. Instead, it sits with it, sips tea with it, allowing it to become ordinary. In a world obsessed with productivity, with therapy apps and hustling through heartbreaks, this film whispers the dangerous idea that sometimes, people stop wanting to be fixed. Not every broken thing wants glue. Sometimes the crack is the only shape that feels familiar.
In their fleeting appearances, the supporting characters serve as brief flashes of life’s absurdities.
They don’t fill the narrative; they punctuate it. They remind us that life itself, even at its darkest, is filled with the kind of ridiculousness that only death can make sense of. They are footnotes in a book we are too afraid to read in its entirety, but they serve as the necessary levity in a film that demands we grapple with the very idea of being. It’s to say the characters almost looked like figments from another play entirely. All in the chase to label Poorna, cure or shame her. But Mrityunjoy, the hired exit door, sees Poorna for what she is.
The writing is laced with gallows humour, sometimes delightful, sometimes deeply disquieting—A man with a menu card of deaths. A secret club where endings are ordered like cocktails. A therapist prescribing hope like a sleeping pill. Mukherji’s satire is not laugh-out-loud funny—it’s the kind of laughter that escapes when you realise the punchline was your life all along.
The BGM by Ranajoy Bhattacharjee, Tamalika Golder, and Anupam Roy plays this game beautifully, soothing the spaces between scenes. Its mournful cadence is like a soft echo from a distant memory—one you can’t quite place, but feel in the marrow of your bones. It is the sound of beauty and loss intertwined, the tragic lullaby we all must eventually sing to ourselves.
Killbill Society looked very self-aware, occasionally teetering on the edge of pretension. There are moments where the film’s intellectualism threatens to eclipse its emotional core, where dialogue becomes so heavy with philosophical overtones that it risks losing the human touch. But these moments are few, and in the grand scheme of things, they are but the necessary discord that allows the film’s coherence to ring true.
Killbill Society is not a film to be consumed quickly or in haste. It is a film that requires solitude, reflection, and perhaps a glass of something substantial to keep you company.
It does not wish to save you. It does not want to entertain you. It simply holds up a mirror and asks, “Are you truly living? Or are you just waiting to die?” The film does not deliver catharsis. It offers something rarer—understanding.
The film is the raw, unfiltered truth of our own contradictions. And in that, it may very well be the most alive we’ve ever felt.
IWMBuzz rates it 4 stars.
