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Jangan pandang belakang (2007)
Plot holes galore, Review by The Storyboard blog
Jangan Pandang Belakang, despite making a killing at the local box-office, isn't even scary and is full of plot holes:
1. When your fiancée seemingly commits suicide, but you and her sister discover a voicemail with her screaming in terror that something's after her, shouldn't you go to the police with the evidence, instead of trying to "get to the bottom of it" by yourself?
2. When you're suppose to be alone at home in the middle of the night, and you hear a voice say "Hey! It's me!", won't you get the hell out or grab a baseball bat, instead of asking "Who's that?" and proceeding towards the voice?
3.Pierre Andre's character comes from a traditional, old-fashioned family that lives in the village but he has a cool name like Darma? 4. Darma seems like a man of few words, but when his fiancée's sister asks "Did something happen between you and my sister?" he immediately launches into a tirade at superspeed, suddenly sounding like Speedy Gonzales on crack.
5. What does that ghostly family of three that enters the lift after Darma exits have to do with anything?
6. Are all office security guards so helpful like those public service Berhati-hati Di Jalanraya ads, even telling you "Drive carefully, and look to your left and right" before you leave?
7. Long-haired ghosts are so passe. What's worse is a ghost that does nothing but claw at the air whenever it appears. What's even worse is a ghost that claws at the air and even splits its hair with its hands (when it's not clawing) to reveal its "scary face".
8. The fiancée's sister is surprised to see the bottle with the yellow cloth tied around it when Darma shows it to her, even when she's actually seen the bottle before when her sister found it on the beach.
9. What's the point of trapping a ghost in a bottle when the ghost appears at the window IMMEDIATELY after it's bottled? And what's the point when it can still haunt people and even kill them when the cork hasn't been removed?
10. Why didn't the exorcist use the cob of corn trick in the first place and save everyone all the trouble? Darma could have been one happy guy instead of moping around unshaven, looking scarier than the ghost.
Puaka Tebing Biru (2007)
A Complex Horror Movie, Review by The Storyboard Blog
Puaka is surprisingly a fine effort for a local horror film, although it's so bizarre that I wonder if it could technically be called a horror film. Unfortunately, it kicks off in a rather rushed manner, hurrying us through scene after scene of shock and jolt, at times resorting to well-worn methods and clichés. I say "unfortunately" because as the film progresses, it starts getting better and better, especially when it slows down for some establishing backstory. By then, we're taken deep into Ratna (Nasha Aziz)'s troubled mind, and Osman cleverly alternates between reality and what could be Ratna's hallucinations, bringing things to a fever-dream pitch, deliberately disorienting the audience and aligning us with Ratna's state of mind. Allowing the audience to experience directly what the protagonist experiences is, in a way, trapping the audience in her mind. We can't help but feel for her. And I believe I've never seen a better performance from Nasha.
Broken down to its bare essentials, and discarding its more bizarre aspects, Puaka is a story about morgue worker Ratna who is troubled by apparitions of a woman and her child. It becomes even more confusing for her when the woman appears to be someone close to her.
Things start to get really creepy when Ratna and her sister decide to spend a few nights in their old house by the sea. By then, we're so captured by the mood of things that we won't really mind the conventional long-haired apparition. But Osman never really lets us in on whether it's all real or a figment of Ratna's imagination. The pontianak seems to be a manifestation of Ratna's guilt and shame. Certainly these are two prominent elements in the film, and one of the characters expressly blames all their troubles on the feeling of "malu." And the shame largely comes from cultural fears and anxieties, which are deeply entrenched in this film and serve as the backbone of the story. Ratna is the central figure who tries to break from tradition, belief and conventions. Her friendship with a female companion suggests something much more intimate, usually a taboo in these parts.
But it's because of this complexity in the storytelling that Puaka becomes slightly messy, by trying to say too many things at the same time. Apart from its wariness of cultural rules and beliefs, it's also a story of women left alone to fend for themselves, among other things. Here, a touch of the melancholy, teetering on melodrama drives the story along, adding to the mood of the unreal, the hyper-reality that Ratna doesn't seem to be able to escape. But when we're led to identify with the central character so well, the numerous branches of the backstory, complete with intertitles announcing each "chapter," is a little jarring. It's like a whole sudden change in tactic. That's why I find the film a little bizarre, but in an interesting way.
In fact, the film is never boring for one minute. It's not every day that we get such an intriguing and complex horror movie locally.
El espíritu de la colmena (1973)
The Storyboard review: Kids and monsters
The Spirit Of The Beehive (El Espiritu de la colmena, 1973) is a film that you either love or don't understand, or both. It's a work that's difficult to hate, and will definitely have an effect on anyone who's seen it, to whatever degree.
The first thing that struck me on the first viewing was how it's the film Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth wants to be. Pan's is, of course, a much more fanciful representation of a child's imagination but Spirit is completely rooted in the real world, with only one dream or hallucination sequence. Both films largely deal with the death of innocence and imagination.
The second thing that struck me upon first and subsequent viewings, and the one thing that kept me completely intrigued, was why director Victor Erice used the horror film Frankenstein as the catalyst for the events in the film.
I decided to watch Frankenstein in its entirety to see if I could gather any clues as to Erice's intentions. The film itself doesn't yield any enlightenment, but it's the extra features on the DVD, namely the hour-long documentary, that finally shed some light.
Even during its initial appearance, it was reported that children were the ones who easily empathised with the monster. While adults were horrified by its appearance, children related to it in fascinating ways, naturally identifying with its innocence and inherent good nature. Even the young actress Marilyn Harris was said to have had no fear of Boris Karloff in full makeup, but instead, ran up to him and wanted to be his friend. But Mae Clarke was apparently terrified of Karloff's getup and he had to wiggle his little finger during their scene together, just to reassure her that he wasn't real.
This I thought was an endlessly marvellous fact, and nicely ties in with Spirit and its two young sisters. Of course, it's an allegorical tale about Franco's times, and it's about the power of cinema. But ultimately, it's a captivating and truly magical (this is an oft used word when describing Spirit) representation of childhood innocence, its dreams, its imagination, its steadfast refusal to disbelieve, and most of all, its unconditional capacity to love. But most of all, it's the loneliness of being a child that's most haunting about the film.
The Spirit Of The Beehive is truly a fascinating and uniquely beautiful film. And its power just grows with each subsequent viewing.