Panggonan Wingit

Don't believe the good ratings, this movie is awful!

It's a Ringu (The Ring) rip-off and a really bad one. It's like if The Asylum made a Ringu movie, but at least the Asylum movie don't take themselves too serious, but this movie does.

It's so boring that I was fighting to stay awake, and I watched it AFTER I taking a 3 hours nap. Seriously the only reason I finished the movie is because I was expecting that it at least had to have a good ending and that's why this movie has an above 5 rating in here; but no! The ending was almost an exact copy of the ending of the Ring, except the ending in that movie was good, but in this movie is really bad.

If you want to waste 2 hours of your life, just count your toes a million times, I bet that's more "entertaining" than watching this movie.

In fairness I'm not selecting a star rating for this film so as not to influence the user "grade" considering I didn't finish watching; I invested thirty-five or so minutes (IMO star ratings should generally be given when a film is watched in its entirety). The budget appeared to be in place and the production looked nice, but the writing! And, as a result, the acting was less than good or convincing. The dialogue was unnatural and seemed to be solely expository for us viewers. My eyes were rolling within minutes. I decided early on that another 90 minutes were probably not worth the time. But, perhaps it did turn into something worthwhile....

Without ever having heard about this 2023 Indonesian supernatural horror movie titled "Panggonan Wingit" (aka "The Haunted Hotel"), I sat down to watch it here in 2024, as I happened to have the opportunity to do so. And given my life-long love of the horror genre and Asian movies, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch this movie.

Writer Riheam Junianti put together a fair enough script. It was entertaining for sure, but at the same time writer Riheam Junianti was cashing in on a lot of stereotypical horror tropes, which sort of made certain aspects of "Panggonan Wingit" a bit mundane and generic. I am not saying that it is a bad movie, far from it, because I definitely enjoyed the storyline, and I am sure that newcomers to the horror genre will get a kick out of watching this movie. As a life-long horror aficionado, however, I found the movie to be good but not impressive.

Given my relatively brief exposure to the Indonesian cinema, then I was only familiar with leading actress Luna Maya in this movie. I will say, though, that the acting performances in the movie were good. The actor Egy Fedly, playing the spiritualist Ki Danang, was really well-cast for his role, because he put on quite a memorable and convincing performance.

"Panggonan Wingit" has a fair amount of blood and visual mayhem, without being over-the-top. So director Guntur Soeharjanto managed to take something that was used in moderation and get something good from it. I liked the special effects, props, sets, and wardrobe in the movie.

Running at 110 minutes, the movie could perhaps have benefitted a bit from a more generous trim in the editing room.

Worth sititng down to watch if you enjoy horror and Asian genre, of course. But it is hardly a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing.

My rating of director Guntur Soeharjanto's 2023 movie "Panggonan Wingit" lands on a five out of ten stars.

The settings and scenery in Indonesian horror films always go hard.

They really make me want to visit their beautiful country!

The storylines on which they are based, however, are kind of mid.

As far as haunted house films go...this one honestly isn't that bad.

But it's certainly not great, either.

The introduction actually got me kind of into it.

Enough, at least, to render me engaged.

Especially considering there are some really cool parts...like the gore.

The gore is quite well done.

Interspersed between the good bits, however, is some questionably dumb stuff.

Some of which hinders the flow.

And there are several times it looked like things were going to wrap up...only for the film to be drawn out longer and longer.

In what seems like an attempt to make this into a series.

The special effects in it are excellent though.

There is some really solid gorey bits.

So, I'd say it's worth a watch for that alone.

But it probably should have been shorter.

5 out of 10.

I'll try not to spoil too much The story revolves around a cursed room at some old hotel, With some of "The Ring" kinda curse. It even shows at the first scene in the beginning. After that it become too much rushed out. Feels like wanna tell so much story in a little time.

Even though the story happens in Semarang there's only a few local language spoken here, and the dialogue feels to formal (kinda like the textbook standard grammar), which is really strange to hear in daily basis.

Not too much jumpscare nor some traditional/cultural background stories behind, just a so-so horror movie to watch.