Boy, this film is intense. Shocking and horrific, a benefit to Indonesian filmmaking is that they unabashedly go to places american studios will never dare. A remake of a 1981 film playing off localized lore on black magic and folk horror, it is refreshing watching cultures where supernatural elements are never questioned. The movie spends a modicum of setup introducing several couples and planting story seeds before hitting the 20 minute mark and escalating into an unrelenting roller coaster of terrors. The story itself ends up being a hodge-podge of tropes, complete with mysterious revelations, a haunted orphanage, and dark backstories, but there’s no pause to explore in any nuance or depth any of the revelations. To be fair, the story and mystery are the weakest elements of this film. They merely serve as flimsy backstory for an unrelenting malevolent and harrowing entity to commit myriad creative atrocities. The filmmakers do not shy away from showing shocking and horrific visuals, as one of the characters declares in emotionless affect: ‘I do not know if there is an afterlife, so I have to create hell here.’ This movie will present some of the most squeamish, grotesque and cringe inducing moments of body horror, alongside with supernatural terrors and torture imagery. Not simply for the sake of being gratuitous, it plays quite into the story that is being told, but doesn’t make the events any less appalling. There are some issues of pacing and characterization and some of the poor CG will distract in a couple of scenes, but complaints are few on a film front. There’s a sudden and rather glaring tonal shift in the ending, but not enough to detract terribly. While this is fairly typical fare for Indonesian horror, this is still the most effective horror film I have seen this year and highly recommended for those with strong stomach and iron will.
Ratu Ilmu Hitam (The Queen of Black Magic) (2019)