Ruqyah: The Exorcism (2017)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

Although, given that this is based on “a true story”, there can be no actual spoilers, right?

Anyway. Jakarta, 2012. Popular actress Asha (Celine Evangelista) has been having some strange and frightening experiences with doppelgangers, poltergeist phenomena and the usual demonic (well, djinn) business. Either she is haunted, or she is losing her mind. Eventually, she is confessing her troubles to reporter Mahisa (Evan Sanders), who is clearly so smitten with her he’s perfectly okay to not report a pretty great story and instead help her out. At first, he’s rather sceptical when it comes to the supernatural aspects of Asha’s troubles, but seeing turns out to be believing.

Mahisa’s research quickly suggests that Asha is possessed by various djinn who are responsible for her success and beauty but also need her to pay a proper price for their help. We further learn that quite a few people in showbusiness are helping their careers along with black magic, whereas Asha genuinely has no clue about her evil supernatural helpers, or where they come from. Eventually, it turns out to be something of a tradition in the village where she comes from to ensorcel the young and the pretty without their knowledge so they are supernaturally endowed to make money for their elders. Beats work, I guess.

Mahisa decides he really needs professional help now, but the imam he goes to recommends a homemade exorcism by an unsupervised (except for Allah, one supposes) amateur like our hero. Apparently, the guy doesn’t believe in actually putting any effort into helping people coming to him for help. which even an atheist like me understands to be not the way holy texts and prophets want their priest casts to act.

As you can imagine, things don’t go terribly smoothly with Mahisa’s attempt at exorcizing Asha while also fighting her black magic wielding mum (Mega Carefansa).

Ruqyah is yet another piece of Indonesian horror by the prolific Jose Poernomo (this time around also his own DP as well as co-writer). It’s not the director’s best effort, for unlike most of his films, this one seems have greater ambitions than it can actually afford, so the plot of a two hour movie is squeezed into ninety minutes, and particularly the big climax feels undercooked and underbudgeted, with the film’s worst effects and worst looking set not exactly making for a winning combination there, even with as much effort as Poernomo puts into dramatic handheld camera waving and pretty tight editing.

This doesn’t mean the whole of Ruqyah is a wash: there are some fun and clever (if less than original) sequences throughout, with some especially fine examples of the doppelganger motive Indonesian horror cinema uses so often, and the nearly mandatory scene of someone’s mirror image acting independently of themselves. The latter comes with the – thematically clever with this particular type of possession – variation of the mirror image looking more afraid than the original person.

Interestingly, Poernomo sets most of the big set pieces and moments of horror in brightly lit, modern apartments, clearly suggesting that contemporary evil is to be found with the rich, the powerful, and the very modern indeed. Which does have a whiff of preachiness and conservatism, too, of course, as is nearly inevitable in religious horror like this. Fortunately, Poernomo doesn’t overplay this aspect of the tale as much as he could. Plus, it’s not as if the religious authorities are terribly efficient before the mandatory final exorcism; and even that one is undermined by the good old horror movie bullshit ending.