I was one of many people made very happy a few years ago when Bong Joon Ho tried to encourage all film fans to "overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles". Cinema certainly doesn't begin and end with the features available in the English language, and exploring the delights of various territories can be akin to sampling a menu in a new restaurant offering cuisine from somewhere you've never before experienced. I know that may make me sound like a pretentious asshat, but I also know that I keep that in my mind as I constantly add more and more titles to my ginormous viewing list.
This brings me to Perewangan, an Indonesian horror film that I knew was about a woman being terrified by something that had cursed/haunted her family. That was all the advance information I had, but it was enough to have me looking forward to seeing it. That feeling lasted until the opening credits, where I saw that this was based on an online thread by someone named "JeroPoint". Maybe that's just an unfair prejudice on my part, and there have been other Indonesian horrors based on online stories in recent years (although I don't think I have seen them, unfortunately), but it didn't seem to bode well.
Davina Karamoy plays Maya, the main character here, who believes that she and her sister, Wulan (Beby Evelyn), are in danger from an evil that has plagued her family for years. Others seem to be aware of the situation, yet there are no clear and consistent rules in place when it comes to whatever the central tormentor/victim dynamic is supposed to play out.
Perewangan is a good idea stuck in the middle of a big mess of a film. Director Awi Suryadi doesn't even deliver more than one or two really good scenes, both being deaths that occur during the first half of the film (I think, although I didn't double-check the timings), and writers JeroPoint, Andri Cahyadi, and Baskoro Adi Wiryanto wholly fail to add anything of substance to a film that at least has a good vein of spooky atmosphere running throughout it. The 109-minute runtime should be enough to contain more scares and interesting plot developments, but nobody puts in more than the minimum effort.
Karamoy does well enough, as do the other cast members (Evelyn, Ully Triani, Shanty, Septian Dwi Cahyo, etc), but I cannot single out any one person. In fact, none of the supporting characters are really given enough to do, which reduces the impact of anything that may happen to, or because of, them. I'll eat my hat if anyone else has watched this and can tell me anything different.
I'll continue to explore Indonesian horror movies when I can, there are certainly many other intriguing titles to check out (and I'm always open to recommendations), but this one was a big disappointment. Atmosphere without substance means that you may as well watch some spooky dynamic screensaver on your computer, but I'll be generous to it because of the visuals and that lead performance from Karamoy.
4/10
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