Absolutely stellar Indonesian feature

kannibalcorpsegrinder

After she comes down with a mysterious illness, a family trying to care for their mother is forced to move on when she finally passes away only to learn something deadly is now in the house with them and must find a way to stop a deadly occult ritual from coming to fruition.

This here was quite the enjoyable if slightly flawed effort. One of the more engaging aspects of this one is the fact that there's a rather strong technical quality at the forefront of the film. Most of the scares present in the film come from the sterling cinematography, which sets this one off with some fine scenes here. The mundane task of caring for their mother in her room while allowing for effects like the constant bell she rings or the objects to flutter past the window to generate its scares where the ability to look at a different point in the distance rather than the on- screen being gives it a great feel. Others, like the dream of the raising from the bedroom to stare out the window only to realize the body is still in bed despite still in front of them or the later fulfillment sequence work incredibly well as does the scenes of the boys witnessing the spectral light out in the distance from the house so that the slow-unfurling drama of what's happening to them have a distinctive tone and feel to them. This also goes for traditional ghost hauntings as well, which are some of the most chilling sequences in the film. The first night after the funeral where the ghostly voices speak out to the son while he's looking through a toy is heart-stopping, while the boys coming up behind each other in the darkness offers some solid suspense set-pieces. This mixture of tactics between strong technically-accomplished scares and traditional jump-scares gives this a great balance and helps this tremendously. Moving beyond this, the film manages a lot more to like in a stellar second half ramping up the supernatural antics even further while introducing black magic, satanic cults and devil worshipping yet still settling firmly in the ghostly hauntings.This is a series of incredibly strong sequences, from the mother appearing to attack her during a prayer to the revelation of the ghosts' connection to the family and finally the creatures appearing in the house which is absolutely chilling, this section of the film creates plenty of chills. That also comes from the exploitation of the Muslim religion against the Satanic rituals needed to perform the occult rites mentioned here creates a strong contrast within these scenes as the source of the horror with burial rites and other beliefs observed here. It lets the terror come forth from the subversion of these themes into familiar grounds which lets this sink in for the foreign audience, which along with the stellar makeup work here gives this a lot to like. There really isn't much to dislike with this one. The main factor holding it down is an overly complicated story that has too many unsolved questions. This one offers no reason for who the evil spirit resembling the mother was or why it was in the house anyway, what the zombies want from the family or the actual plan of the cult was at the end when it seemed everything was already in order. Since the zombies' purpose was already achieved by having the last child of the Satan's slave woman be on their side, this confusion does tend to slightly lower the film although it's nowhere near that big of a detriment.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language, children-in-jeopardy and strong themes of death.

score 10/10

kannibalcorpsegrinder 27 October 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3842871/