If you haven’t heard of the Telugu-language horror show Mansion 24, then check out our rant, sorry, review to learn more about it. On the other hand, if you’re left confused or just plain disappointed by the end, then we’ll try and explain some things to make it a little more digestible. The series has six episodes lasting 30 minutes each, so it’s bingeable in half a day. Although each episode tells a different story, like an anthology, there’s one central plotline that is meant to continue throughout the series. We’re introduced to Amrutha, the daughter of esteemed archaeologist and traitor Kalidas, who is believed to have escaped with an important finding. Amrutha is on the hunt to find out the truth about her father, and on the way, she meets an interesting man—the security guard of the abandoned “mansion.” To get to the crux of her dad’s disappearance, Amrutha takes this man’s help and listens to his stories to find her father.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Show?
Amrutha’s mother is hospitalized after hearing the news of Kalidas being a traitor to the country. The news takes a toll on her, especially since he’s missing. Amrutha does some research, speaking to the police, the archaeological department, and more, to find out her father’s whereabouts. In the end, she finds her way to the abandoned apartment building where her father was last seen. She meets an eye-patch-wearing security guard who enthralls her with his stories of the “Mansion.” She tells him she’s an investigative journalist who wants to write about the place, so she decides to record his stories. At the same time, she gathers evidence through pictures of the place from outside.
Episode 1: The Author Who Doesn’t Like Kids
Every episode has some sort of moral message. The first story is that of a writer who has moved to an apartment in the mansion to write his next novel in peace. This means leaving his 3-month-old baby in the hands of his wife while he “relaxes” in the apartment alone. While he is unable to write anything of interest, he notices some strange occurrences in his room (for no reason at all). He gets a headache, takes medication for it, and returns to the apartment to get back to work. His typewriter disappears, and when he finds it again, it starts typing things on its own. The man starts hearing the noise of children running around and singing nursery rhymes (oh God, help us!). It turns out that the stories he writes have always been against family. He finds his way to the flat below his own, where multiple kids are supposed to be. He finds a shoe box full of children’s shoes, which he packs and throws away to teach them a lesson (wow, such a great lesson). He gets a warning from the resident homeless-looking guy, but he goes home to sleep for the night. He hears whispers, and the shoes he threw away are now in his own house. He’s surrounded by ghost kids, and it is assumed that he was killed by these kids, but he disappeared and was never found again. According to Amrutha, his disgust for kids is what turned into fear and became pedophilia, so he probably ended his own life. It’s not quite clear what Ohmkar was trying to say with this story? Family is important? Kids shouldn’t be disliked?
Episode 2: An Affair Gone Wrong
In episode 2 of Mansion 24, the caretakers from the hospital come home to take care of Amrutha’s mother. Amrutha’s very upset and wants her mother to be well taken care of, but still, she goes to the “mansion” to talk to the guard. Story No. 2 is of the woman in the pharmacy. She’s been seeing a married man, and because of this, she’s had some weird experiences in the apartment. Her lover comes to see her one night and tells her not to tell anyone he’s with her. He says he’ll stay for a few days and seems to be quite disturbed. The girl’s been taking some pills to help her with her anxiety, but her job allows her access to as much of a dosage as she likes. Again, she’s scared off by strange things in the house. One night, she hears the news that a man has killed his wife and children and fled from the scene. She connects the dots and realizes it’s her “boyfriend” they’re talking about. Instead of running away out of fear of being his next target, she decides to pack some bags and get out of there with him. The guy is in the shower and repeatedly tells her not to let anyone know that he’s in the house with her. When the bell rings, it’s the same guy on the other side of the door, meaning she’s been seeing a ghost in the house. She realizes he’s come to kill her next, and with white eyes (you know, the ghost ones) and a hammer (no, not a Thor-sized one), he gets her. Amrutha concludes that the girl would’ve had hallucinations after taking too many pills, become paranoid, and killed herself (they really said affairs = death). I still don’t know how this is going to help Amrutha find Kalidas, though.
Episode 3: Shadows Or guidance?
Seeing that her mother is ill and her father is missing, Amrutha can’t eat (finally, some signs of worry). She heads back to the guard for yet another spooky story. This is the story of Devudamma and her family. Radha has married into a family where the mother, Devudamma, was worshiped as a human god. She used to keep the peace in the village and was given a feast every year, which, if she finished, was a good sign for the village. When she was dying, she told her young, impressionable son that she would come back to see him. Keeping that in mind, even today, now that he’s a grown man with two kids of his own, he believes his mother’s last words. The broker who brings them to the house tells the man that they should not go to the house next door because a weird man who does strange rituals lives there. This gives the man the idea to call out to his mother there, kind of like an Ouija board, but much bigger in scale, you know? When Radha goes to work (because she’s the only one in the family who does anything at all), she tells her husband to take good care of the kids. He’s been filling them up with stories of Devudamma, though, and seems very out of it, more than usual. When she returns, her daughter is missing, and she follows her husband to the other house. Their daughter sits there dressed as Devudamma and talking like her. She tells them all to join her, claiming she’s returned to take them back with her. The poor family is suffering, and she asks Radha how much longer she can keep this up on her own. Radha, too, joins the family, and they all kill themselves, a sacrifice to Devudamma. Amrutha has a clear answer for this story, too. The guard had found a book with drawings of Devudamma in it. Amrutha realizes that the little girl Ammu, whose mind was taken over by Devudamma’s stories, had started to play the role of the dead mother who has returned. A child must not be scarred for life but guided by truth.
Episode 4: Career Or Child
This has got to be the worst of the stories in Mansion 24. A pregnant woman is seeing ominous dreams and decides to go to the doctor about them. She’s a Bharatanatyam dancer, and her husband is away for work. The doctor tells her to get hypnotherapy (sure, make things worse), and she agrees. During the session, she told the doctor that she had made some mistakes when she was younger. She feels like she’s under surveillance when there’s nobody around because her previous boyfriend was a photographer who used to take secret photos of her. It turns out they got pregnant, but she decided to get an abortion because her career was her number one priority at the time (how scandalous!). The man felt hurt because she didn’t tell him (how dare she think about her own body?) and committed suicide from the “pain.” Now, the woman feels guilty for having aborted the baby and sees her ex and the child call her murderer, ultimately plunging to her death by jumping from her flat. Nah, this anti-abortion story was really unnecessary. According to Amrutha, it was her guilt that caused her death. When she gets home, she’s called by the guard of her own home to see some CCTV footage. We don’t know what it is just yet, but it looks like Amrutha might be getting closer to the truth. We’ll try and believe that because there are no other links here.
Episode 5: Straight Out Of “Fresh”
This is the story of a guy named Lilly (don’t ask) who kills women and sells their meat for food. These women are sex workers, or “low lives,” because Lilly assumes he won’t get in trouble when they go missing. Half the episode is spent seeing him mince the meat of a poor girl’s leg. After some time, he goes to hunt other girls, and Sultana takes the bait. He has a wall full of masks, and they almost look human-like (not really). Sultana is mesmerized by the masks and asks him if he can make one of hers, too. He feeds her a steak (yes, it’s from the same leg), and she can’t believe how wonderful it tastes. While she’s enjoying the meal, he tries to spike her drink, but she refuses to drink it. Sultana starts seeing the ghost of the mask she liked, and every time Lilly and she are about to get intimate, she freaks out. Ultimately, she watches Lilly be murdered by a ghost. Sultana was taken to the hospital after that, and now Amrutha plans on meeting her.
At the same time, we see a little bit of her dad’s work at the beginning of this episode. During one of his archaeological expeditions, Kalidas’ team found a small but important box. The box contained a map of the location where the “Mansion” stands now. Amrutha finds out that something important is in room 24 based on Kalidas’ notes. Now, she finally takes the keys to the room to find out the truth about her father (it took her long enough).
Episode 6: A Tale Of Two Sisters
It turns out Sultana was the sister of Razia, the girl who was taken by Lilly earlier. The meat that she ate was from her own sister’s leg. She came to check on what Lilly may have done to her sister and found something much worse than she expected. She finds the freezer in which Razia’s tattooed arm is stored and realizes what he’s done. Then she pretends to be Razia’s ghost and scares Lilly until she kills him in the dark room, making it seem like she’s gone mad and Lilly died from a ghost attack (this entire thing makes no sense at all). Sultana got her revenge, but she ended up institutionalized for it. After some time, she finally got out, and Amrutha got to meet her. Now, it seems like this building was abandoned for a really long time, but Sultana still looks the same as she did in the story, so why is the building the way it is? Nobody knows.
Amrutha makes it to room no. 24 and finds her father has been killed and bricked into the wall (yeah, we know it’s familiar). The guard was never a guard, but Seetharam, the head of the archaeological department that Kalidas was working under. It turns out there was a graveyard where the building was at first, and for 70 years, a treasure has been buried there. In his greed, Seetharam wanted to keep the findings to the few people who knew about them and not make them national news. Even though it was a national treasure, Seetharam wanted to keep it for himself and killed Kalidas, who was virtuous and against the idea (the dude could’ve pretended and survived). Remember the CCTV footage Amrutha found? It was Seetharam’s men trying to scare the people of her house—real people who were dressed as ghosts. Now, those men beat her up until she’s a pulp and leave her there to die, just like her father.
What Happens To Amrutha In The End?
Kalidas’ spirit awakens and steps out from the walls, possessing his own daughter to save her life. He tells Seetharam that good always prevails, choking him to death as we see both Kalidas and Amrutha holding him in the air alternatively. Seetharam is killed by Kalidas because he’s committed a sin, but it’s the hands of his daughter Amrutha. Kalidas gives him a huge lesson about how he deserves punishment and throws him out of the building. Amrutha returns home to her mother, who wakes up at the scent of her husband’s ghost (yes, whatever that means). She walks up to him to say her final goodbyes, and even the nurse is shocked by the sight. Amrutha gives her mother a hug as they grieve the death of Kalidas together. Instead of getting arrested, Amrutha gets an award, and as an investigative journalist, she’s asked to head Kalidas’ team (how?). When she returns to the mansion to check on how things are going, the homeless-looking man shows up again. This time, he basically tells her to stay away from the treasure that should be burned down to ashes rather than excavated, but she ignores him and heads inside in front of all the reporters and the team she’s with.
At the end of season 1 of Mansion 24, Amrutha finds a round gold disk with a three-headed cobra engraved on it. She shows it to her senior, and he tells her to throw it away immediately. Instead, she’s the one who gets dragged by nothing into a dark cave-like structure where no one can see her anymore. The man sees the disk again, and it creates a sinkhole where it’s fallen. It seems this treasure was never meant to be found, and Amrutha should’ve stopped the digging once she heard the ominous saying. Her fear was that she would leave her mother alone if she tried to find her father, but now she got overconfident and look where that got her. It’s not quite clear what the makers are trying to say here; if it’s a national treasure and she’s doing the right thing, what is she getting punished for? “Only God’s Virtue Lasts Forever,” says the homeless guy, so whatever that means, Amrutha will probably find out in the next season of Mansion 24 (we really don’t want to find out).
