Impetigore - Herança Maldita

I really like the visual tone of this movie. Joko Anwar always use shades of yellow lights and dim, making the audience's perception to get into the movie storyline. Traditional and cultural elements are blended in the details in several scenes. In my opinion this movie is the development of the Pengabdi Setan (Satan's Slave) movie, but equipped with many plot twists.

This movie exceeds my expectation from the usual indonesian horror movie genre. I've watched Pengabdi Setan and wasnt really impressed by it. So my expectation when watching this movie was not very high, but all that was gone just after seeing the opening scene. It was good, it was thrilling and full of tension, the scene captures my attention immediately. But as good as the opening scene were, the story especially the motives behind it all seems a little bit convoluted and forced. I do gave props for mr.anwar for setting up some takes as if it was gonna be a jumpscare but ended up didnt do it and then show us the take that completely took us by surprise. He reversed our expectation of jumpscare. The pacing is great, the lead actress and actors are great with the exception of the old lady and some extras, she overdone it a bit in my opinion. Also the use of language is rather odd, mixing jawa language and formal indonesian accent was kind of created an imbalance of the whole atmospheric feeling. It threw me off every time I hear it. It would've been better if they used full jawa accent, the lead with full jakarta's accent and didn't mix the two.

All and all this is a solid cinema work. Mr anwar managed to capture the eerieness of a small village, the horror of black magic and what the mob mentality of an isolated villagers can do.

From the studio (or producer) that brought you 2016's "The Wailing", though in my opinion not as great, "Impetigore" is an evidence that Joko Anwar (Jokan) is ever ready to take the global market with his horror, mind-twisting work of art (or at least just Asia, or maybe the south-eastern part of the continent). It's an improvement of his directing, writing, and movie making skills; Plot-twist was unexpected to me (I had it figured in my mind, then I was like, "oh, it's nothing like I had thought before"). Blood cgi is already perfect, ghost cgi? not so, still need a lot of improvement. mature content was still shying away from being frontally shown, no wonder since we live in a country that BBC (or CNN? I kinda forgot which one) considers as "ultra-conservative country". There are still so much of bad horror movies produced in this country, some at least have a kind of storytelling and movie directing technique that even put Hollywood-own horror stories to shame. Korea, Japan, and Thailand are probably still kings in this matter, but I'm sure sooner or later Indonesia will catch up to those three thanks to the creative power of individuals like Jokan and the Mo Brothers. Oh talking about Mo Brothers, their next projects, "Ratu Ilmu Hitam" and "Sebelum Iblis Menjemput Ayat 2", will be released 3 weeks in the future and in the next year. Whether both will be the same level as, or even better than (or maybe worse than, please don't!!), "Impetigore" is a matter time will tell.

It is good enough, a bad movie, production value is surprisingly great for an Indonesian movie. I liked it, but it is not that scary, it is more of a mistery than a horror movie

Opening scene is okay but after that the film is boring. the way Maya knows how to free the curse is too easy. But the film is still creepy