← Back to Directory
Santosh
Movie

Santosh

2024 • Crime, Drama, Thriller

Woke Score
6
out of 10

Plot

Newly widowed Santosh inherits her husband's job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a girl's body is found, she's pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

Overall Series Review

Santosh is a British-Indian police procedural drama that uses a murder investigation as a framework to aggressively critique the systemic failures of Indian society and its institutions. The film immediately establishes that the protagonist, a newly widowed constable, must take her husband's job for survival, as her traditional family has shunned her. The narrative is relentlessly focused on exposing the corruption, sexism, and intersectional prejudice embedded within the local police and the culture at large. The story centers on the investigation of a murdered Dalit (lower caste) girl, immediately drawing the focus to caste hierarchy and police apathy. Male characters are largely depicted as incompetent, corrupt, or openly misogynistic, while the female characters, despite attaining institutional power, must navigate or succumb to the system's moral rot. The film is a self-declared feminist and politically savvy piece that presents an unvarnished, critical mirror to its setting, where justice is transactional and power is always compromised. It operates entirely on the principles of societal critique based on immutable characteristics.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics10/10

The plot's central conflict is a lecture on systemic oppression, specifically focusing on the intersectional hierarchy of casteism, misogyny, and communal tensions. The murder victim is a Dalit girl, and the police's initial response is characterized by obvious caste prejudice and apathy. The investigation also involves communal politics, with dark mutterings about a Muslim suspect being introduced to the story. The narrative judges characters based on their social identity and position within a 'systemic oppression' framework.

Oikophobia10/10

The film functions as a sustained critique of its home culture, portraying the institutions—specifically the police force and the in-laws' traditional family structure—as fundamentally corrupt, sexist, and racist. The movie unveils the misogyny, caste prejudice, and Islamophobia inherent in the society it depicts. The police are shown to be a 'lazy, bribable bunch of layabouts' who are more interested in moral policing than actual justice, framing the local system as riddled with institutional rot.

Feminism9/10

The film is described as a 'powerfully feminist' procedural where the female lead only enters the workforce to survive the deep-seated misogyny that leaves her houseless as a widow. All male colleagues are generally depicted as sexist, toxic, or bumbling idiots. Santosh's journey is one of a woman securing power in a male-dominated world, mentored by a 'charismatic feminist inspector.' The message is strongly anti-male and promotes career over the traditional family structure, though the protagonist is a complex figure who is corrupted by her power, pulling the score slightly back from perfect Mary Sue territory.

LGBTQ+1/10

The narrative makes no mention of centering alternative sexualities, deconstructing the nuclear family beyond the protagonist's widow status as a plot device for her new career, or advocating for gender ideology. The focus is exclusively on the socio-political issues of caste, corruption, and gender/communal violence within a traditional societal context.

Anti-Theism2/10

The core critique is directed at institutional corruption and social hierarchies like caste and misogyny, not explicitly against traditional religion or faith. The film does not frame traditional religion as the root of all evil or feature Christian characters as villains, maintaining a focus on political and social apathy. The high score elements of 'Spiritual Vacuum' and 'Hostility toward Christianity' are largely absent.