In short: Roh (2019)

aka Soul

The film takes place in a not clearly defined time in the past. Mak (Farah Ahmad), dwells together with her daughter Along (Mhia Farhana) and her younger son Angah (Harith Haziq) in a hut in the forest. They are desperately poor, Mak’s husband clearly having died, though she seems to treat his absence as if he could return any day now, from wherever he is.

One day, the children encounter a strange little girl (Putri Qaseh) while checking traps in the woods. She’s covered in clay and seems destitute and confused, so the they take her home with them to clean and feed her and find out where she belongs. That night, strange things start happening when Mak tells a story about a forest spirit. The next morning, the family awakes to the little girl eating raw birds in a mess of blood on the floor. After telling them they’ll all be dead on the next full moon, she cuts her own throat. Mak decides to drag the dead body further into the forest, fearing to be blamed for the girl’s dead. From here on out, bad luck and supernatural ill omens seem to haunt the family. Nightmares and bodily sickness as well as apparitions of the dead girl and violent possession follow. There might be help from a new neighbour (Junainah M. Lojong) living a couple of hills over; there’s also a Hunter (Namron) looking for the girl who might be of help or a threat. If there is any help to be had for the family at all.

The Malaysian Roh, directed by Emir Ezwan, is a fascinating, practically hypnotic movie. Tonally, there’s a folkloric quality to the narrative, with characters that take on very specific archetypal roles, yet it is still emotionally wrenching to watch the family of three that’s hardly getting by being destroyed in the cruellest manner. There’s a degree of sadness and hopelessness, combined with a certain ruthlessness towards the audience and the characters on display that seems parallel to the spirit of Western 70s horror movies. And make no mistake, while the film is clearly coming from the arthouse side of the tracks, with the slow – or rather, careful – pacing that comes with that approach, it is also perfectly willing and able to very explicitly show horrible things happening to these people. It’s not a film lacking compassion while doing this; it’s just one willing not to let its compassion rule its artistic instincts.

There’s also a religious aspect to the tale, but I’m not really knowledgeable enough about the roles of the iblis in Islamic theology (or the point where theology and folklore meet in Malaysia) to have much understanding of what’s going on there. I can say that my lack of knowledge didn’t hurt my being very impressed by the film.

Visually, this is a beautiful and brooding movie, Ezwan repeatedly creating the kind of haunting shots and compositions that can stay with a viewer for a very long time. The burning tree, the little girl staring, or the final revelation are moments I can’t imagine to forget any time soon; neither will I forget the rest of Roh.

In short: Santau (2009)

Successful architect Halim (Esma Daniel), his wife Nina (Putri Mardiana) and their little daughter live a happy life, until one day someone decides to smash their happiness. After they ingest some cursed food, horrible things start happening to the family. Halim just gets a bit sick and becomes more jumpy than he usually is, and his daughter sees terrifying dead old women where her mother should be and has minor episodes of possession. Nina takes the brunt of the black magic attack, though. At first, the mild-mannered woman just becomes as rude and angry as a normal person, but soon enough, she's beginning to mistreat her daughter, and feeds her husband worms in his noodles. The next step is obviously a full-grown possession, and true enough, eventually Nina licks wormy masses from the floor, gibbers and develops a tendency to levitate.

Fortunately, religious neighbours can be a whole lot of help when demons attack.

I still don't know enough about the state and history of horror films - or even cinema - in Malaysia to be able to contextualize Azhari Mohd Zain's Santau as a part of the nation's cinematic output. I suspect that the film's religious slant is quite typical for the country, but going around with the hammer of religion is of course also an important part of the whole exorcism movie sub-genre. Like with any old earnest Catholic exorcism movie, this Muslim version also leaves little old atheist me somewhat emotionally disconnected from the whole affair. Watching scenes after scene of people praying and seeing the main character vowing his love for god after his family has been through the wringer isn't exactly what I find entertaining, nor something I find horrifying in the sense the film's maker would probably prefer.

But fortunately Santau takes its identity as a horror film (and therefore a piece of entertainment through fear) as seriously as it does its religious convictions and so goes through all those things I (and other heathens) love dearly about Southeast-Asian horror films: there are more than enough scenes of creepy old women, the eating of frightfully icky stuff, harm done to women and children, etc. and so on, to make one quite happy, or - as the case might be - quite nauseous. Putri Mardiana's possession performance is pretty riveting too. Not only does the actress shout, and howl, and writhe with the best, she also has a frightful willingness to throw herself into the least pleasant physical aspects of her role; I certainly wouldn't want to touch the things she puts her face in.

The exorcisms (making up the movie's final third) are done pretty dramatically, too, staged by Zain with enough theatrical oomph to let me forget that I'm basically watching a woman shout and various men pray for half an hour. It sure helps that every exorcist here has his very own style (probably with religious connotations I don't even begin to understand).

So, while Santau is most certainly not a film made for me (that, by the way is not a critique), and not one that affects me much on an emotional level, it still is a very fun ride, made with one eye on religious righteousness and the other on righteous horror.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: malaysian movies,horror,in short,azhari mohd zain,putri mardiana

In short: Jangan Pandan Belakang (2007)

aka Don't Look Back

During an exorcism, a demon is pulled out of his victim and captured in a bottle, which is then thrown into the ocean.

Some time later, a young man called Darma (Mohd Pierre Andre) is hit with terrible news during a meeting. His fiancee Rose (Intan Ladyana) has suddenly, without any reason he or her family could comprehend, killed herself with sleeping pills.

Especially Darma's twin sister Seri (of course also Intan Ladyana) is skeptical thanks to a strange message her sister had left on her voice mail right before she died. In the panicked message, Rose talks about something that is following her and that she can't get rid of.

When Seri and Darma drive to Rose's apartment, they find the place in a slightly disheveled state. Obviously, having a place that is still tidier than mine was atypically disorganized for her. There is not much else of interest to find, until Darma stumbles over the bottle we saw in the intro sequence. Blissfully unaware of the nature of the thing, he takes it with him.

That same day he starts to see things. Plagued by terrible nightmares and the feeling that something besides grief is following him and torturing him, Darma decides to return to his home town in the country to get the evil spirit exorcised.

I don't know much about Malaysian cinema, but Jangan Pandan Bekalang does mostly speak the language of contemporary Asian horror as seen through a slightly Islamic lens.

So we still have our creeping longhaired female ghost, but it looks rather putrid and has the disconcerting ability to just float behind poor Darma (well, sometimes just to roll around on a tray hidden by her ragged gown).

The film might begin and end with quotes from the Koran, yet I wouldn't call it religious horror. There is no real urge to convert its viewers to anything, the one short scene of religious instruction doesn't really lead anywhere, and although you could read a certain undercurrent of Darma and Rose being singled out by the demon for their a-religious ways into it, the film never goes so over the top with it that it is becoming annoying to the atheist. It is a horror movie first.

Which of course leads to the question "Is it scary?". Well, not all that much, but there is one exceedingly creepy scene tucked away in the last third which alone makes the film worth watching.

And while it isn't all that scary a movie, Jangan Pandang Belakang is still a well done one with solid acting and pacing, decent photography and enough of the spooky stuff to keep me entertained.

For me as a European, it's also just pretty darn interesting to watch a contemporary horror movie from Malaysia - so this is how the concept of demonic possession works there, and this how an exorcism is done etc etc. If you're like me, and interested in other people's conception of the supernatural (even if you are as completely unbelieving in it as I am), that alone should provide quite enough food for thought to keep you going for a while. It most certainly does for me.

 

Technorati-Tags: malaysian movies,in short,horror