Writer/director Karan Kandhari (Bye Bye Miss Goodnight) presents audiences with Sister Midnight, a dark comedy (slightly akin to Nightbitch (2024) while also being incredibly different) about the situations that arise from arranged marriages and what happens when you’re just not meant for that life or lifestyle.
Sister Midnight focuses on Uma (Radhika Apte), who is soulfully and spiritually not meant to be in an assigned marriage; she is rude, intense, and nothing at all of what is “expected” of her in this situation. She arrives at her new home where her timid and equally uncomfortable husband Gopal (Ashok Pathak) is, on their wedding night. This uncomfortable and unfortunate first encounter is more attune with the reaction from watching cringe comedy — something so uneasy and uncomfortable but you cannot simply look away. While she wants to try her best at being what society believes and dictates she should be as she’s ready to consummate their new marriage, Gopal is so uneasy and uncomfortable that he struggles to remove any article of clothing in her presence.
L-R: Radhika Apte as Uma and Ashok Pathak as Gopal in SISTER MIDNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures.
Uma tries to adjust to her new role in life and develop a routine, but it’s all foreign to her, including cooking, meal prep, and adjusting to the new bustling neighborhood she finds herself in. She meets her neighbor Sheetal (Chhaya Kadam) who tries to show her the ropes of adjusting to this new lifestyle. However, nothing can prepare Uma for everyone’s reaction to her resistance and brashness which is where Sister Midnight starts genre-bending from a dark comedy to a psychological dramatic comedy, complete with a mental break in our lead of Uma.
Radhika Apte as Uma in SISTER MIDNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures.
Sister Midnight swings for the absolute fences which is bold and refreshing to see when it has a cast that supports it, but if the effort ends at the cast’s execution, it can become tiresome and messy. Kandhari throws so much in Sister Midnight, and some of it separately is great, some of it together is great, but all of it together is a disjointed, messy endeavor that gets buried under its own premise and drive to be so stagnantly different than anything the audience has seen previously. It’s a bold take that focuses on dismantling societal norms and enforces that not everyone can fit into the mold that is presented for them, but it loses its messaging through too many genre-bending techniques and having *so* much go on. A little restraint and a stronger narrative focus would’ve helped elevate Sister Midnight from a good concept executed mostly well to what could’ve been a darkly comedic benchmark.
Radhika Apte as Uma in SISTER MIDNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures.
The performances from both Radhika Apte (The Wedding Guest) and Chhaya Kadam (All We Imagine As Light) are the stars in this otherwise clouded atmosphere. They both deliver magnetic performances which bring forth passionate energy and chaotic magic which carry Sister Midnight to some great moments, but that is where the magic ends, unfortunately. Their performances make the movie undoubtedly great, but the hodgepodge of ideas doesn’t let them excel past the expectations created.
Radhika Apte as Uma in SISTER MIDNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures.
Overall, Sister Midnight boasts two incredible performances that are simply brilliant, but with an over-bloated script and genuinely so many concepts and genres, ironically, this may be a social commentary on how arranged marriages lose the identity of the people involved in them where the message is also lost along the way because it’s delivered in such a chaotic way. Sister Midnight works much more than it should thanks largely to Radhika and Chhaya, but with some tightened ideas and clearer focus, Kandhari could have an incredibly bright future.
Screened during Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.
In theaters May 16th, 2025.
For more information, head either to the official Sister Midnight BUFF webpage or Magnet Releasing webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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