Do You See What I See

Mawar turns 20 and along with her best friends visits her parents' grave on her birthday. She feels lonely and yearns for a boyfriend to love her for who she is. In the graveyard, she chooses a boyfriend as her birthday wish and Mawar is granted that wish. Soon she starts behaving oddly as she starts giving more priority to her mysterious boyfriend Restu, which concerns her best friends and it doesn't take much time to realize, who this mysterious Restu is. Will they be able to save her friend from the toxic relationship she has got herself into, forms rest of the story.

This is one film which I treated mostly as a horror-comedy and it worked better that way for me, rather taking it seriously. More than the main character, the friends characters were more impactful. There are a couple of scenes involving the demon which is pulled off well. Though the film starts with a glimpse of a mysterious man digging a grave, the director circles back to it only in the penultimate scene only. Until then, the story revolved mostly among the girls with the stakes not too high considering the savior they turn to is another friend. The reveal in the end was predictable but as a film it definitely was a decent one time watch.

The story about a woman who is dating a ghost is interesting, whether using the perspective of the woman, or her friends. The movie uses her friends perspective, so we can see some interesting things like when her friends suspecting whether her boyfriend is a good man or not, or whether her boyfriend is human or not. And of course when her friends are haunted by the ghost. It's an interesting story and surprisingly well executed. However, I think this film needs to deepen the story, especially in the cause of the core incident to add more scary element to the film. Also, the main character's acting still feels a bit stiff. Lastly, I am very satisfied with the ending chosen.

Adapting a short 30 minute-ish audio only podcast into an over 90 minute full feature film is not an easy feat for sure. However I was pleasantly surprised by how good this movie really was initially. It started out strong and I really like how they were able to still make the movie so creepy & tense despite we who have already listened to the podcast kinda got the gist of what will happen next already. Unfortunately the way they dragged the movie in the latter act kinda bogged down the whole movie altogether. But this was in no way a deal breaker as overall the movie was still really worth a watch, even just to witness Diandra Agatha's shift from the innocent naive Mawar to a much more sinister version of herself.

Recently I started watching indonesian horror movies and they are really good!! This is movie is based on a podcast and it is really hard to make a movie based on a podcast so a big salute for that! And talking about overall movie technically than the I loved the lighting and cinematography of the movie the way they have shot the movie in low lighting and giving the realistic experience to the audience. The camera angles was best I really enjoyed watching the movie. Sound plays a important role in horror movie and the makers of this film has done a great job in the sound part too... Really nice work!!

In relation to how most horror movies are rated on IMDB, I would have expected this movie to have an average rating between 6 and 7. Its a well made solid movie. The only issue is that it can get slow at times but overally keeps a decent pace with plenty of actual horror scenes which are quite scary and creepy. There are so many much slower and boring horror movies rated higher than this. This is actually an entertaining movie. Characters and their interactions are quite realistic and believable as well and each actor has done justice with their respective characters. Story is not too deep or complicated but it serves its purpose. All the special and visual effects were also done well for the most part. I am not a big fan of how the movie ended though. But that is a highly subjective take, some will probably like the ending.

In the end, its a decent one time watch movie for horror fans who want to watch a movie which is a straight up horror movie and NOT some metaphorical movie about trauma. Casual fans might find some scenes to be too scary though. Indonesia has become World's Horror movie capital in my opinion and this movie just adds to that.