‘Sister Midnight’ Review: Radhika Apte Is A Woman Under An Unusual Influence In Karan Kandhari’s Wry Debut

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners may be the year’s most ambitious and crowd-pleasing vampire movie, but what about 2025’s most meticulously-staged, clever iteration on the well-worn genre? Okay, so the answer is still Sinners, but Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight – the British Indian director’s feature debut – runs a close second in a make believe competition between two films that literally only have bloodsucking in common. Where Sinners is a big-budget spectacle that inches damn near close to masterwork territory by a modern auteur eager to break free from the bounds set by IP storytelling, Sister Midnight introduces audiences to fresh faces, both behind and in front of the camera, and tackles a different familiar trope – the inherent strain that hampers an arranged marriage – through the lens of a horror-comedy multihyphenate with images and ideas to spare.

It might help that the first person to come to mind while watching Sister Midnight is Wes Anderson, given its attention to aesthetic symmetry and wry dialogue that borders on the obscene, but it’s Kandhari’s vision that sets the film apart from what might otherwise feel like an imitation game gone wrong. When we first meet Uma (an excellent Radhika Apte), she has recently been betrothed to Gopal (Ashok Pathak), but not because she cares for him in the slightest. Uma has merely been wedded off by her family, and Gopal seems like a nice enough guy to take on the burden of this foul-mouthed misfit with dreams far bigger than her small town can withstand. Of course, she’s hardly able to explore any of those great ambitions due to her newfound duties as a de facto housewife, nevermind the fact that Gopal isn’t bringing in much money at his lousy, low-paying job and their home is roughly half the size of a Brooklyn studio. 

Uma, at a loss for how to clean or prepare a proper dinner with the bare trappings she’s inherited in wedlock, attempts to connect with her neighbors, namely Sheetal (Chhaya Kadam), though mostly everyone looks down on the new girl on the block for being exactly that. That her marriage to Gopal is entirely loveless, despite her best attempts, certainly doesn’t aid matters. In one early scene after he arrives home from work and unzips his pants, she reads the move as an invitation for sex, a move at which Gopal immediately balks. The next day, Uma enters the apartment to find her husband masturbating; the only thing he can’t get it up for is coitus with his wife. 

Yet what makes the whole affair most insufferable is Uma’s worsening physical condition. Her stomach begins bothering her out of the blue – a doctor tells her “it’s just a funny tummy” and prescribes flat cola, white rice, yogurt, and lots of turmeric – but she also begins to endure long lasting chill spells, ones that turn her gray and make her break out in cold sweats at random. As things continue to deteriorate, with no help from Gopal, Uma enters a dissociative state, one that sees her blacking out suddenly, only to reawaken in places she doesn’t recall going to. Once she finally feels in control of these spells, another one hits, and she comes to while biting a chunk out of a stray goat’s neck. (This tends to go against doctor’s orders for mending a stomach ache.)

Kandhari’s darkly hilarious, acidic film continues apace from here, as we are left to consider whether or not Uma is truly a vampire or merely a woman at odds with her own existence, rebelling by giving into uncontrollable urges that exist in contrast with what would be considered “humane.” After all, she’s not necessarily interested in dining on human flesh – she’ll stick to livestock and small birds, thank you very much – so the idea that she’s a descendant of Dracula’s is never something that Kandhari puts on the table. More than anything, this twist of sorts is a sharp (if somewhat obvious) way for the writer-director to position his heroine in a genre-ified dilemma between theoretical imprisonment and dangerous freedom. Uma’s impulses bring chaos upon a life that is otherwise orderly to a fault, but that order is what is expected from the masses that surround her. Think about it: If you saw a neighbor wandering through the night with crazed eyes and a static gait, wouldn’t you be a bit suspicious?

If anything, the commitment to this bit causes Sister Midnight to fall into the most energetic rut a film could manage, a one-note feast of set pieces that see Uma performing similar acts on repeat that remain entertaining in spite of their repetitive nature. But that Kandhari commits so hard to his film’s central idea is part of the charm, and Sister Midnight’s technical mastery helps to iron out any issues one might have with its elongated second act. Working with the Norwegian cinematographer Sverre Sørdal, views of all sizes, from cityscapes to not-so-leisurely strolls down dirt roads, are captured on luminescent 35mm film and wouldn’t feel out of place if they featured in works by Payal Kapadia or Wong Kar-wai. The score and soundtrack, crafted by Interpol’s Paul Banks, match the film’s energy with an assortment of needle drops from The Band, T. Rex, and plenty of messy tunes in between.

Anything but messy (at least, in terms of her performance) is Radhika Apte, whose storied career in Indian cinema reaches a fever pitch with Sister Midnight, allowing Apte to go batty while never feeling belabored in her antics. The comedic material suits her stone-faced demeanor well – one can imagine her giving a sly look at the camera in a mockumentary – but it’s in the film’s darkest moments that the limits of typical actorly fare are tested and amplified. You’ll never want to see a human being dine on a bird’s head again, but that Apte’s Uma is doing so out of the interest of survival and sanity makes it far less gut-churning than when Simon McBurney went to town on a pigeon in Nosferatu. In essence, that’s what Kandhari understands so well, and what makes Sister Midnight a fresh form of vampiric storytelling: Everything is about sustainability, no matter the digestive cost. As Uma says to another character at one point in the film, “It’s hard being human. What’s your excuse?”