While horror movies from Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea have been popular with fans for a long time, in more recent years, great examples of scary films from other Asian countries have found appreciative audiences in the west. Indonesia has produced some particularly impressive horror movies, including Timo Tjahjanto's wild Evil Dead homage May the Devil Take You and Joko Anwar's Satan's Slaves, which stands as the most successful ever produced in that country. The need for streaming services to find content has really helped these movies breakthrough internationally, with Netflix and Shudder respectively giving these two films high profile US releases. Anwar's latest movie, Impetigore, is set to join them, and hits Shudder this week.
Impetigore hits the ground running with a seriously scary opening sequence. Two women, Maya (Tara Basro) and Dini (Marissa Anita), are working in toll booths on either side of a road at night. Maya mentions that she is scared of one regular driver she sees, who--of course--turns up minutes later. Without spoiling anything, this encounter leads Maya to find out that she was born in a remote woodland village, and she might have inherited a large house there. So the two friends head into the countryside to find the village. But inevitably something is very wrong there--the locals believe a terrible curse has been placed upon the village by Maya's relatives, and her return starts a disturbing sequence of events.
Viewers going into Impetigore expecting non-stop shocks like the opening scene suggests might be initially disappointed. Anwar is a filmmaker who puts atmosphere ahead of obvious scares, and there's a slow build to the next big fright, as Maya and Dini head to the village to find the potential inheritance. But the director's skill at building tension and mystery establishes a mood that quickly makes up for any lack of blade-wielding mayhem like in the first 10 minutes. Basro and Anita are both very engaging as the likeable but ill-prepared city girls, who believe they are simply going to find an expensive house then return with a lawyer to force the locals to hand it over. There's quite a bit of humor early on between the pair, but as the situation gets serious, the laughs gradually disappear.
Although Anwar throws in a lot of familiar horror content--curses, machetes, black magic, evil puppets--he never falls back on lazy cliché. The villagers are not the insane backwoods locals of movies such as The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The curse that they believe afflicts their village is a deeply disturbing one for the whole community, affecting new-born children, and the dark decisions they take when they realise Maya has returned to her home are driven by this pain. There are a couple of more obvious villains--the elderly woman (a menacing Christine Hakim), who runs the village, and her son, played by Ario Bayu--but for the most part the villagers are portrayed sympathetically as normal people forced to deal with a terrible situation.
Like many of the best Asian horror movies, Anwar uses traditional and folklore to great effect. As well as superstitious belief in curses, the traditional Indonesian art of Wayang Kulit--a type of shadow puppetry--is used as a main plot point. Not only does this allow for some ghoulish horror (hint: these puppets aren't made from the traditional animal skin), it also proved some incredibly striking imagery. One particularly gory sequence takes place behind the linen screen used in Wayang Kulit, with the spraying blood and butchered bodies strikingly silhouetted. The whole movie is beautifully shot, with the location photography and stylish camerawork making it one of the best looking horror films for some time.
But while Impetigore is visually striking throughout, it does fall down on a story level. As with all films of this type, there comes a point where the director needs to reveal to the main character--and by extension, the audience--the truth of the main mystery. In this case it's what the curse is and what the villagers want with Maya. Unfortunately this information is dumped via two lengthy flashback sequences, that kills some of the momentum that Anwar has been building. And ultimately it's not that important, this is a horror movie dealing with familiar themes, and with so much tension and atmosphere created in the first hour, a bit more ambiguity might have helped the movie's narrative flow.
This is a relatively small misep however, and Impetigore remains one of the strongest horror films of the year so far. Horror is often at its best when it combines the familiar and the new, and Anwar is adept at this. While fans love to be scared, disturbed, and challenged, there is also something impressive and strangely comforting about a filmmaker that understands the conventions of the genre, and can confidently deliver original ideas within a tried-and-tested format. With mainstream US horror entirely absent from the big screen, there's never been a better time to seek out some great genre movies from other corners of the globe, of which Impetigore is an impressive example.
