JioCinema’s latest “thriller” series, Honeymoon Photographer, tries too hard to be a proper thriller, but it ends up being pretty mediocre. I think, if the story had been wrapped up in a movie format, it might have kept its edge, but as a series, Honeymoon Photographer gets repetitive and loses the tension that’s needed for something to really feel like a thriller. The plot is centered around a newlywed couple, Adhir Irani and his wife Zoya, who go on their honeymoon to the Maldives, where they bring along a photographer, Ambika, to capture their happy memories. But we find out that Adhir and Ambika had an affair in the past, and after one drunken night there, Adhir ends up dead, found facedown on the beach the next morning, and the rest of the show revolves around figuring out who killed him. That’s what we are about to find out from this explainer.Â
Spoilers Ahead
Why was the investigation started?
After Adhir Irani was found dead on the beach, there were five main suspects who could have potentially killed him. First, there was his wife, Zoya, who might have had a motive to kill him for money, because their married life wasn’t that healthy due to so many underlying tensions, like Zoya once being pregnant and aborting the child without consulting Adhir, which clearly showed they had serious issues. Then there was Ambika, the photographer to whom Adhir confessed he was in love, though he had to marry Zoya because of the pregnancy. Ambika, on the other hand, had kept this whole affair secret from Zoya, possibly to protect her job or avoid drama. It’s easy to see why Ambika could have been a suspect as she’d been there the whole time, and her past with Adhir made things complicated. Another person to consider was a man named Rihen, whom they’d met at the beach while Ambika was taking romantic wedding photos for them. He was charming and handsome, and Ambika was clearly drawn to him. Finally, there was another woman involved whom they’d encountered at a yacht party. She’d attacked Adhir and blamed him for the death of her 26-year-old sister.
Apparently, Adhir’s father, Romesh Irani, owned a pharmaceutical company that put a drug called Fallian on the market, and this drug was dangerous, with the deaths it caused sparking a major scandal. The woman believed Adhir’s family was responsible for her sister’s death, which gave her a possible motive as well. However, there was also the chance that Adhir’s death was simply an accident. He was heavily drunk that night, and similar cases of people accidentally dying on the beach had happened before. On the night of the murder, all four of them; Zoya, Rihen, Adhir, and Ambika were at a bar and got pretty drunk. In that drunken state, Adhir tried to force himself on Ambika to kiss, her even though she clearly wasn’t interested. Zoya saw the whole thing, which only added to the tension between everyone that night. Later, when Ambika returned to her room, Adhir tried to follow her as someone had messaged him from her phone to ask him to meet Ambika in her hotel room. But this message wasn’t from Ambika, and she was already dozing off when it happened. When the investigation began, police ran a toxicology report on Adhir’s body to see if it was an accident or a murder, and the results showed acute toxicity from thallium, kicking off the search for the real murderer.
Why did Zoya want to kill Adhir?
When the investigation started, all eyes were on Ambika because it looked like she had a motive to kill Adhir out of jealousy. Inspector Divya and the other officers suspected her, especially after they discovered that the message to Adhir to meet at 3:30 a.m. was sent from her phone and the murder happened just ten minutes later, at 3:40 a.m., which made things even more suspicious. However, Zoya and her brother Zubin knew that Ambika wasn’t the murderer because she was with them the whole time. After Ambika had dozed off at the party, Zoya and Zubin were the ones who took her back to her hotel room. Even when Adhir came to meet her, they were there too. But why were they around? Because they were the ones who actually wanted to kill Adhir in the first place. Actually, Zoya had accidentally killed a woman with her car while driving, but her brother Zubin took the blame and went to jail for it. And who is Zubin? None other than Rihen, the same charming guy who tried to lure Ambika, but it turns out that his real plan was to set up Adhir and blame the murder on Ambika, and he was the one who sent that message from Ambika’s phone. Actually, Zoya and Zubin came from a poor background, and they were desperate to live a luxurious life, so marrying into a wealthy family was their way out. They knew Adhir, with his family’s successful pharmaceutical business, seemed like the perfect target. Zubin had already served time in jail for his sister and needed stability, so even though he knew Adhir didn’t love Zoya and was in love with Ambika, he didn’t care, as he just wanted Zoya to marry Adhir for his money, and their plan was to eventually frame Ambika for Adhir’s death so they could take over the wealth. But things didn’t go as planned. Even though Zoya and Zubin wanted Adhir dead, they couldn’t do it because they had to take care of Ambika and couldn’t be in two places at once, so in the end, someone else murdered Adhir.
Who killed Adhir?
It turned out the police’s initial suspicions weren’t wrong after all, as Ambika was the one who actually killed Adhir. The truth was that Ambika’s mother had died because of the same drug that caused all the trouble for Adhir’s family’s pharmaceutical company. Her mother was everything to her, and even now, Ambika would hallucinate about her to feel like she was still there, like her closest friend and roommate. Ambika had been seeking revenge against Adhir for a long time, pretending to be a photographer and acting like she was in love with him, all to carry out her plan. She wanted to kill him months earlier when they went to the pre-wedding shoot in Mauritius, but Zoya had shown up suddenly in their room when they were together to look for Adhir, which ruined the plan. Ambika knew she would have to finish what she started on their honeymoon. So, during their honeymoon, she made her move and laced Adhir’s drink with the same Fallian tablets from his family’s company which were responsible for her mother’s death. Ambika wanted to give Adhir a taste of poetic justice by killing him with the very thing that destroyed her life. After leaving her hotel room that night, Adhir wandered down to the beach, but the drug had made him lose control of his senses, and he eventually died there on the sand, just as Ambika had planned, and ultimately her revenge was complete.
During Honeymoon Photographer’s ending, the police uncovered the truth when they found an old protest video against the Irani pharmaceutical company where Ambika was there to protest against the same scandal that caused her mother’s death. Inspector Divya realized that everything Ambika did was for her mother, especially after the court had ruled in favor of the company and called them innocent after the company paid the judge a hefty sum under the table. That’s why, as the legal system failed Ambika, she did what she thought was right. But before the police could arrest her, Ambika had already fled the country and boarded a flight, disappearing to escape the consequences. Will she ever be caught? Who knows. Maybe she’ll manage to play innocent again and keep running, at least until it’s too late.
