Santet

Needless to say that I had never actually heard about this 1988 Indonesian horror movie titled "Santet" from writers Naryono Prayitno and Tim Soraya prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2024. I happened to stumble upon it, and given my love of both the horror genre and Asian cinema, then of course I had to watch this movie.

But never having heard about it, I have to say that I didn't know what I was in for here, nor did I have any expectations from director Sisworo Gautama Putra.

I have to say that "Santet" felt more like a horror comedy than an actual horror movie. Why? Well, some of the characters were written like goofy morons, acting silly and delivering goofy dialogue. And the music in the movie just didn't really permeate a horror atmosphere, as it was way too cheery and silly.

And suddenly there was a song and musical number in the movie. Are you kidding me? That just was insanely laughable. Once again, not adding to this supposed to be an actual horror movie.

Suffice it to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. However, I can't claim to say that I was overly impressed with the acting performances throughout the course of the movie.

"Santet" was quite a difficult movie to sit through, because the storyline was rubbish, and there wasn't really anything interesting happening throughout the course of the 94 minutes that the movie ran for. I guess maybe if you're high on mushrooms you might get a kick out of watching this strange movie and enjoy the spaced out music.

There were a couple of gory scenes in the movie, but it was hardly sufficient to make it worthwhile sitting through 94 minutes of watching this nonsense. And the special effects were pretty low-key and lousy to look at.

This is definitely not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. Nor is it a movie that I would recommend for fans of horror movies or Asian cinema to actually sit down and waste their time on watching.

My rating of "Santet" lands on a two out of ten stars.

After the brutal murder of her husband by the village gangsters Katami (played by Suzzanna) takes off into the nearby jungle and encounters a witch who takes Katami on as her apprentice. Meanwhile, Bisman (the ugliest gang leader you'll ever see) who falsely accused her husband of black magic plans to become village leader but never failing at looking like the village idiot.

At some point the movie breaks into a musical around the middle with some security guarding singing about what good guys they are. For real.

Then the black magic begins. Don't expect to much blood or gore in this horror, yes there is some but its pretty light. A lot of the humour is clearly meant to be derived from the movie not taking its too seriously as a horror.

As a witch Katami does some pretty nasty acts of vengeance against the village thugs/pimps. Exploding crotches, snake swallowing and stomach explosions but there level of gore isn't really all that great in detail just simple flesh colored balloons filled with red liquid. Very cheap.