SATAN'S SLAVES (2017 - Indonesian)

Studio:       Shudder
Director:    Joko Anwar
Writer:       Joko Anwar
Producer:  Gope T. Samtani
Stars:     Tara Basro, Bront Palarae, Dimas Aditya, Endy Arfian, Nasar Anuz, Muhammad Adhiyat, Arswendy Bening Swara, Egi Fedly, Ayu Laksmi, Elly D. Luthan, Fachri Albar, Asmara Abigail

Review Score:

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Summary:

Following a tragic death, siblings uncover a disturbing connection between their family and a satanic cult.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1981 – In a house shared with her grandmother Rahma Saidah, 16-year-old brother Tony, 10-year-old brother Bondi, and six-year-old deaf brother Ian, 22-year-old Rini and her father care for Rini’s catatonic mother Mawarni Suwono, a formerly famous recording artist now bedridden with a mysterious illness. One evening, Rini finds her mother entranced in front of a window overlooking a nearby cemetery before suddenly dropping dead.

At Mawarni’s funeral, Rini’s father speaks with Islamic preacher Ustad. Rini meets Ustad’s son Hendra.

The siblings’ father leaves on a trip to the city to find a way of solving the family’s financial troubles. Paranormal activity begins plaguing the house and spooking the children as they each have frightening encounters with their mother’s ghost.

Hendra tells Rini about his own encounters with Mawarni’s ghost. Fearful of the evil entity, Hendra advises that everyone should move in with his family until Rini’s father returns.

Bondi and Rini discover their grandmother dead in the house’s basement water well. After the incident, Bondi begins behaving as though possessed and driven to murder youngest brother Ian.

Rini finds an unsent letter that her grandmother wrote to Budiman Syailendra, an occult expert and longtime friend. Hendra takes Rini to see Budiman. Budiman explains that Rini’s grandmother believed Mawarni asked Satan for children. Budiman warns that cultists may come for Rini and her brothers, but they will not be able to take anyone as long as the family loves each other. Budiman sends Rini home with a magazine in which he wrote an article about satanic fertility cults.

Ian has a terrifying encounter with his grandmother’s ghost.

Rini finds a hidden track underneath the label on one of her mother’s hit records. Rini discovers that the track is ancient Javanese chanting played backwards.

Tony talks to his sister about Budiman’s magazine article. The article explains that a barren woman can join a satanic fertility cult and bear children, but her last child must be given to the cult for sacrifice when he turns seven years old. Pointing out the six-year gaps in their ages, Tony theorizes that their mother kept having children to avoid having anyone turn seven. Tony also shows Rini pictures of cultists who always appeared at their mother’s performances.

Tony worries that Ian’s seventh birthday is only three days away. However, Tony remains skeptical of Budiman’s additional claim that the living dead will come for the final child.

Ustad comes to investigate after Rini sees a vision of her mother and Ian sees a vision of his grandmother in the house. Ustad advises everyone to pray to God. After another terrifying ghost encounter, Rini and Tony rush Bondi and Ian to Ustad and Hendra’s house, where they begin staying.

Based on Budiman’s article, Tony tells his sister that their family must stick together to combat the cult. Tony adds that women in the cult were impregnated by other cultists, implying that their father is not their biological dad.

Hendra goes to see Budiman alone. Budiman gives Hendra a draft of a new article to deliver to Rini. On his way home, a man in the road causes Hendra to crash his motorcycle. A truck violently runs over Hendra and kills him.

Villagers bring Hendra’s body to Ustad for burial. Budiman’s paper falls out of Hendra’s pocket. Rini picks it up.

An unseen entity tries pulling Rini outside of Ustad’s house. The siblings’ father returns home with a plan to move his family into a flat downtown the next day.

Rini confronts her father for the truth about what she saw him whispering to her mother on the night Mawarni died. Before he can fully explain, they are interrupted by the commotion of Ian becoming locked inside the basement well room. Ian’s father rescues Ian from a ghostly vision before the boy can drown.

Cultists surround the house during a rainstorm outside. Paranormal activity plagues the inside of the home. Bondi finally snaps out of his murderous trance to rescue Ian from another ghost. The family reunites and the cultists vanish.

The next day, the family packs to leave and makes plans to celebrate Ian’s birthday at midnight. Ustad stops by to visit. While walking outside, Rini finds strange red seeds strewn where the cultists were standing.

When their driver doesn’t show up, the family is forced to spend another night in the house. The electricity suddenly goes out.

Rini finally reads Budiman’s article draft. Presenting his revised theory, Budiman explains that the final child is not taken as a sacrifice, but because he is Satan’s offspring. The cultists, or slaves, come not to take the child, but to leave signs for Satan’s shepherds, who are the living dead. Rini tells Tony that she thinks their grandmother was appearing only to Ian because she was trying to protect him.

Mawarni’s ghost appears, spurring Rini and Tony to hide. Ian looks outside his bedroom window and begins chanting in Javanese. Bondi sees the living dead arrive from the cemetery. Ustad confronts several zombies when they enter downstairs.

Fleeing from Mawarni, the siblings’ father collects Rini and Tony. They find Ustad murdered. The trio then recovers Bondi.

Mawarni escorts Ian outside to the zombie shepherds. The other family members lock themselves inside the house. Grandmother’s ghost helps bar the door when Budiman arrives to rush everyone outside to his car. Claiming that Ian was always Satan’s child, Budiman leaves the boy behind with the zombies while driving Rini, Tony, Bondi, and their father away.

One Year Later – Rini’s family continues living in a flat next to Batara and Darminah, a cultist couple secretly continuing to monitor Mawarni’s children.

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Review:

“Satan’s Slaves” loosely remakes the Indonesian film “Satan’s Slave,” which is either from 1980 or 1982 depending on the information source, but is decidedly different than the same-named 1976 movie with Michael Gough alternately titled “Evil Heritage.” More interestingly, the original “Pengabdi setan,” as it’s known in its native tongue, is in turn allegedly an even looser remake of Don Coscarelli’s 1979 classic “Phantasm” (review here).  With unusually exotic lineage like that, you should have a solid starting reference point for the sort of devilishly dreamy intensity conjured by this 2017 incarnation.

Rini’s recording artist mother Mawarni has seen much better days, both career wise and health wise.  Lying on her deathbed, Mawarni’s catatonic condition has left her family, which includes Rini’s father, grandmother, and three younger brothers, burdened by home care and flirting with financial destitution.

While far from the outcome anyone prefers, Mawarni’s death should provide some solace, if not for emotional peace than at least for the household bankbook. Instead, the ill woman’s sudden demise starts a series of supernatural encounters stringing back to a sinister secret in her past.

Rini and her siblings have a heritage that has unknowingly haunted everyone since birth. Now that heritage haunts them literally in the form of ghosts, zombies, and cultists determined to take a payment previously promised by Mawarni.

Imagine “Hereditary” with a foreign fright film flavor, but presented with James Wan’s sense of cinematic spook-showmanship.  Introductory explanations involving “Phantasm” riffs notwithstanding, that’s as close as one can come to approximating the texture of writer/director Joko Anwar’s Indonesian thriller in a single “it’s like” sentence.

“Hereditary” (review here) and “Satan’s Slaves” share more in common than devil-worshipping family ties.  Like Ari Aster does with his film, Anwar anchors the thematic core of his creeps around the earnest emotion of mournful melodrama.

From the youngest brother to the eldest woman, actors across the board embody endearing personalities organically, creating characters that drive “Satan’s Slaves” on an interior engine of tearful tragedy and sympathetic struggles.  Interpersonal relationships tether terror terrifically so that drastic swings into frightful fantasy don’t seem so unbelievably improbable.

The film’s other fist hits harder still with hearty horror.  “Satan’s Slaves” overflows its deep sink with all the macabre madness it can manually muster.  It’s easy to picture Anwar gleefully going down a list checking off classic chiller tropes.  Possessed children, reanimated corpses, ghoulish mirror reflections, and cultists standing still in silhouette don’t even scratch the surface of how viewers are taken on an all-encompassing audiovisual tour of scary movie staples.

“Satan’s Slaves” features plenty of inherently moody moments, although Anwar obsessively orchestrates each one into an unnecessary jump scare, dousing scenes in 70s-inspired slow zooms and sudden audio stings.  There are only so many whip pans to a ghostly visage an audience can stomach before they begin arriving with such regularity as to become entirely ordinary.

Anwar’s knack for stylish staging is self-evident in techniques that touch tones of “The Conjuring” (review here) and “Insidious.”  But he often operates at a nine, such as when overusing lightning flashes during an ominous rainstorm or adding an angelic aria to the piano keys of a “Rosemary’s Baby” score.  Dialing instincts down to a seven would temper eeriness to be more effective. Overloading on exuberance ultimately limits “Satan’s Slaves” to being really good at its game instead of inarguably great.

Refusal to recognize when too much is too much also stutters pacing by making the film last longer than its story requires.  Even Rini finds herself forced to flip between suspecting supernatural strangeness and sudden skepticism whenever the script has no better alternative for slowing down to deliver more mid-movie exposition.  Purposeful plot impediments stick out for being what they are: momentary contrivances meant to either extend scenes or connect them later down the line.

A knock-on effect of the screenplay’s structure means certain setups mentally write their outcomes well in advance of the movie addressing the obvious.  No one needs a crystal ball to envision how events involving a motorcycle, water well, or dropped paper will play out, for example.

However, crimes of laying things on thick or being a touch too predictable only qualify as misdemeanors when a movie hits terrific notes of tension as well as “Satan’s Slaves.”  Joko Anwar builds solid substance from painfully human currents draped chokingly beneath inhuman dread.  In spite of some familiarity, Anwar taps a formula for being frightening that sets up “Satan’s Slaves” as an impressive example of carefully crafted Indonesian horror.

Review Score:  75

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