In short: Asih (2018)

1980. Eight-months pregnant Puspita (Citra Kirana), her husband Andi (Darius Sinathrya) and Andi’s mother (Marini) have moved to the country. Alas, the house belongs to the territory of the kuntinalak Asih (Shareefa Daanish), of future Danur fame, and we all know that Asih has a bit of a thing about children, even the not yet born. So the young couple is going to have to cope with some rather hefty supernatural troubles that won’t simply be resolved with the proper disposal of a placenta (though they will try that).

There’s really no reason why the Conjuring movies should have all the fun with spin-off prequels about some of their ghosts and ghoulies, particularly when the Danur-movies, from which this spins off, seem to have commercial clout in their native Indonesia comparable to the US advertorials for a couple of horrible charlatans.

Not looking at the commercial side of the business, I’m not sure the world exactly needed Awi Suryadi’s prequel to its universe’s mainline films. The Danur movies (as directed by Suryadi) themselves aren’t always the deepest horror movies, but they are consistently fun and interesting, sometimes even inventive. The first Asih isn’t quite so good. From time to time, Suryadi manages to find his usual flair for mood-building and the ability to turn clichés into a fun set-piece or two, but at least half of this not exactly long movie feels a bit too much like a creative team dragging their feet. There really isn’t enough material on screen to make for a full movie, and nothing we learn about our titular kuntilanak’s backstory changes all that much about what we know from the first Danur, making much of the film at hand simply feel rather too slight for comfort, particularly since it shows little interest in doing much with the more interesting elements about our victim family.

Satu Suro (2019)

Towards the late stages of her pregnancy, Adinda (Citra Kirana) and her horror-hating atheist (so you know he knows little about genre tropes and will need to change his ways) screenwriter husband Bayu (Nino Fernandez) move into a large cabin on a mountain side. The goal is apparently to get away from the Big City (which I assume is Jakarta) and its stresses. However, the new country home turns out to not have been the greatest choice when one’s goal is stress avoidance.

Whenever she’s alone, Adinda has various threatening, and clearly supernatural, encounters. There’s also a creepy old lady (Yati Surachman, certainly this week’s winner of the “best creepy old lady in a movie” award) sneaking around, and when our poor heroine has dreams, it’s stuff like a nightmare about first puking up nails and razorblades on chains of hair, followed by a new-born.

So it is rather par for the course that the night the baby is finally coming is the one before the first of Suro, a day which, following some Indonesian beliefs, is the highest holiday of demons and spirits. So it might not come as too much of a surprise for any viewer that Adinda’s night at the hospital will turn into a series of encounters with standard Indonesian spooks, ghoulies, the ghosts of demon worshipping doctors and nurses, and other nasty entities. Bayu, on the other hand, will be rather surprised when the nice, modern hospital he left his wife in has turned into a clearly abandoned ruin while he was fetching some stuff from home and eating a bit at an expository food vendor’s stall. But don’t you worry, he’ll meet his share of nasty supernatural entities as well. Which is only fair since what is going on is connected to his family background.

From over here in Europe, it’s so nice to see the new wave of Indonesian horror and the way it celebrates its influences by classic Indonesian horror from the 70s and 80s, not falling into the nostalgia trap and instead using this as a way of broadening influences and looking for connections. Many a film, certainly Anggy Umbara’s Satu Suro, also seem to take away from the classics a willingness to let loose and just go there, not thinking about taste (and sometimes logic) so much it stifles the imagination, taking the risk of becoming a bit goofy when it also means to become more than a bit awesome (in both main meanings of that word).

Despite featuring a surprisingly complicated and involved back story, Satu Suro is a film very much in the tradition of the horror film as campfire tale or haunted house ride, firstly interested in presenting a series of creepy scenes and shocks, with in-depth plot development and deep characterisation a secondary thing. What’s here when it comes to the latter is rather perfunctory, things like Bayu’s turn to religion coming over as a bit of standard trope resolution business (and probably a nice way to calm down a censor or two), the film chomping at the bit to come to the next cool ghoul, depict some demon worshipping ritual, or feature a pretty great series of scenes in which the creepy old lady also turns out to be a badass creepy old lady (and more). Just wait until she pulls out her magical whip.

However, Umbara does not fall into the trap of making the series of spirits and demons we encounter as completely random as they at first appear. Their appearance and behaviour is actually integrated into the background, already elevating the film above the random jump scare school of horror of certain US mainstream horror franchises by virtue of actually connecting things. And even though that story is a concoction of clichés and tropes, it does push the film through its increasingly weird and inspired series of supernatural and occult encounters nicely. As do the performances by Kirana and Fernandez who provide the proper amount of humanity needed in between the loud stuff.

The digital effects aren’t always great (though about half of them are), but this is one of those films where the wonderful ideas beat the not always perfect execution nicely. Turns out I don’t really care if the magic whip of the creepy old lady looks believable, as long as it is used as nicely as it is here.