So what does Season 4 of True Detective have in common with the 2012 Bollywood movie Talaash? Quite a lot actually. In fact True Detective: Night Country borrows most of its core themes from this movie.
Spoilers Alert
- A woman is brutally murdered by a group of entitled men; this has already happened before the timeline of the show/movie.
- No one cares for the death of the woman/police doesn’t investigate seriously because the woman came from a marginalised section of the society (Inuit/Prostitute).
- The “ghost” of the woman starts exacting revenge, killing her murderers one by one
- Two/A police officer investigating the murder of these men discover the connection to the murdered woman.
- The police officer is anguished because of the loss of their son in a (car/boat) accident many years ago. Both have difficulty sleeping at night and spend the night wandering their town/city.
- People (Partner/Neighbour) tell them that they have made contact with their dead son, which angers the police officer at first. But eventually, they believe the person and finally find peace knowing their son’s soul is at rest.
- The police officer falls in the sea and almost drowns, but is rescued (By partner/ghost).
Even after all those similarities, True Detective doesn’t feel like an outright copy of Talaash. It has enough to distinguish itself, but clearly the creators have been inspired from the movie.
That being said, I liked both the movie and the show, though I liked the movie just a bit more.
