Kuntilanak (2018)

Prime for the pickin'

By: JWBM

This Indonesian horror film is based on Malaysian folklore depicting an evil female entity who died while carrying a child. It turns the legend into a kind of found object horror tale with a one-track minded diabolical presence that catches unsuspecting victims in its snare. It's a sort of "The Monster Squad" meets a more recent "Stranger Things" and "It" with a group of young kids who take a strange mystery into their own hands while adults are busy doing adult things.

How the legend is depicted starts to feel as ordinary as they come if you watch horror on a regular basis. For the folks that seldom do, then maybe this might catch you off guard and be something new. The story relies on sheer coincidence that the object would land in the hands of a household with a young kid. This particular foster home has five, which ends up being a buffet for the spirit with sharp teeth and talons designed for unimaginable pain to potentially feast on. Even with that, the villain feels like a con man who shows up with a gun and ski mask that's all show and no bite, rather than slowly trapping them with something more creepy and consequential. On the one hand, it's relentless and keeps your attention to a degree, but on the other all of its mystery is out in the open: you know what it is, you know what it is after, yet you watch the kids still follow it into traps over and over again.

This has all of the familiar horror trappings: splitting up, can't reach help, following noises or visions where you shouldn't. The end result is accompanied by a sudden noise and jarring image to make you throw the popcorn in the air and shout "Lord have mercy" with the enthusiasm of a 60 year old black lady in Sunday dress. While the sets and cinematography gives this a slick look, and there are some grisly effects and a few inventive takes on this beastly looking demon, after doing the rounds on that formula it starts to feel predictable.

It's one of those stories where the villain hasn't reached a true plateau yet, and the filmmakers are meanwhile gearing up to set up a finale over dropping a bomb shell too early. The kids give some of their own personable attributes of little squabbles, getting a closer connection to each other despite their differences, along with some kind of over-used xylophone effect to signify that you should laugh on cue with them. When it gets time to throw down, they are still kids with kid logic who's main go-to is yelling each other's names back and forth to the point that you should have them memorized by the time the credits roll.

All and all, "Kuntilanak" is a simple movie with simple results you can count on at times, but shouldn't expect much more than that.

Rating: 4/10

Director: Rizal Mantovani (The Chanting; 5 cm)
Actors: Sandrinna Michelle, Aurelie Moeremans
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: YouTube trailer

The Secret: Suster Ngesot Urban Legend (2018)

A secret that fall on deaf ears

By: JWBM

Time. One has ample opportunity in this day and age to do something that amuses and entertains. We could go out and enjoy the fresh air; find a corner and read a book; or sit down and potentially get lost in another world with a film. "The Secret: Suster Ngesot Urban Legend "—an Indonesian horror/thriller—is neither an adequate escape, nor will you come out better than you left for deciding to spend the next hour and thirty eight minutes with it.

Essentially a young woman races out of her dad's glitzy mansion. Blinded by emotions, she veers off the road and ends up in the hospital. Then after she gets random visits by a series of zombie-like ghosts who always pop up when you least expect. This feels like it was directed by one of the interns on a soap opera set where the acting is overly dramatic, there are more coincidences than you can count, and the tone has a tendency to have erratic mood swings.

One of the biggest issues is it has a tendency to jump right into something, then backtrack as to where it was headed. It's to the point that when attempting to establish frights, you have no idea what you're supposed to be actually scared of. Often it works up to some suspense, then fizzles away as if the day goes on. It has little driving point to get behind other than borrowing this or that from more effective thrillers. Something bad is happening to a spoiled woman who has the personality and character development of a wooden shoe. Is that really a selling point? There are a share of non-sensical, out-of-place scenes that go from head-scratching, annoying, to laugh-out-loud for all the wrong reasons. It feels like the film had a different script rewrite each day.

The setups and the character interactions feel forced and often times come on too fast. Even the little things that would make this world real: such as a cut and pasted scene at the hospital with a woman who mishears a nurse and thinks her relative got it more worse was supposed to be a comedic setup. The main character gets invited into a home of a person she doesn't know. Cut scene to "Drink this," and they are intimately chatting about supernatural events like it's an every day occurance. Practically everything here feels like a puppeteer that becomes visible and you can't get the strings orchestrating it out of your mind.

Its footing flows as smooth as cleats on concrete. It has no concept of natural progression, or establishing any sort of suspension of disbelief. You end up feeling so disconnected to the events and characters that every slow and agonizing second that goes by feels another minute you could have been doing something else.

From Black to Red recommends instead: "The Abandoned" for showing us how you can take a simple haunted house type story and effectively make the hairs stick up on the back of your neck.

Rating: 1/10

Director: Arie Azis
Actors: Nagita Slavina, Raffi Ahmad
Info: Wikipedia link
Trailer: YouTube link
Urban legend info: Link 

May the Devil Take You (2018)

You may lose your lunch

By: JWBM

An evil witch and a greedy man walk into a basement. No, that's not a setup for a joke. But what transpires is a pact sealed with hair and blood that turns hellish for everyone related to the man then after.

"May the Devil Take You" is an Indonesian spin on what "The Evil Dead" and "Drag Me to Hell" did for overpowering demons and impossible curses let loose on seemingly ordinary people. It's like an amusement ride of inventive scares and frights: the kind where you get a jump and nervous laugh, but then can't wait for the next one. It's over-the-top, which makes it more fun, tingling, and with a gross-out factor than it is outright chilling to the bone. Though some of the imagery that goes along with it can leave dark impressions still present after you blink. It works on a different level due to creating their own grisly mechanics and hideous landscapes to get lost in.

The story is as basic and timeless as they come, however the filmmakers turned this into a unique and moody experience that feels like the lines got blurred to a never ending nightmare that's at odds with reality or rationality. The performances at times dance between being grounded, exaggeratedly cinematic, to going off the rails; though are often recovered from the next moment by throwing something else new at you. While the film has a certain flow that keeps the senses alive, some scenes feel more pieced together rather than seamless to a consistent timeline.

"May the Devil Take You" is the kind of film where some drama and story is established, but ends up being background fodder and long forgotten for the real reason the premise was set up: to trap a bunch of unsuspecting victims in a house and one by one torture them and ultimately take their souls. Yep, it's sadistic and effective enough with a certain mood, sense of kinetic action, and built-up suspense that your eyes become frozen to the screen to not miss a thing. You end up rooting for both sides due to a fight that looks every bit as grueling, passionate, and animalistic as they come. There's no time limit, the rules are loose, though the stakes may be your life. But who's counting?

Rating: 7/10

Director: Timo Tjahjanto (Macabre; Headshot)
Actors: Chelsea Islan
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: YouTube link