Santau
My rating:




So yeah, the buzz around this movie is all about lead actress Putri Mardiana's scene in which she eats maggots. Oh yeah, that reeaaallly makes me want to watch it. Seriously, I considered skipping this movie, but in the end I gritted my teeth and decided to go for it. I thought the trailer was actually half-decent, and hey, what's this? A glowing review from Cinema Online? Well slap me silly and call me Suhaila, let's check it out!

Cinema Online's reviews aren't worth shit.

Halim (Esma Daniel) is a successful businessman with a beautiful wife, Nina (Putri Mardiana) and a daughter named Echa (Farisha Fatin). But someone jealous of his happiness has placed a curse on his family, in the form of a demon possessing Nina's body. As Nina's condition worsens, Halim begins to suspect that one of his neighbours - friendly and helpful Usin (Riezman Khuzaimi), or cold and aloof Man (Zul Handy Black) - is responsible.

So it's a horror movie, right? Meant to be scary, yeah? Give you that good ol' feeling of dread, huh? That's certainly what writer-director Azhari Zain intended. From the very first scene, he aims for an atmosphere of constant tension and foreboding, even in something as innocuous as Halim and Nina throwing a little kenduri at their house. And to accomplish that, he employs jarring musical cues and everything up to and including the kitchen sink - no matter how little goddamn sense it makes.

Take an early scene, in which little Echa hears creepy noises from her bedroom and sees a long-haired, rotted-flesh ghost under her bed. Wooo, scary! But in the very next scene, Halim leaves for work, and Echa is right there playing with her toys like nothing happened. What was the point of the bed ghost? Damned if I know. Then Halim goes to his office, he thinks he's alone but suddenly a figure moves past the camera, so wooo, spooky. Turns out it's one of his staff, but the guy's all monotone and blank-faced and warning him about all this dengki khianat gonna get all up in yo' face - and then he disappears into thin air. Next day when Halim meets the guy again, guy says he wasn't in the office that day. So who was he? What was his deal? Damned if I know. Damned if the movie knows, or gives a shit.

The whole film is like this. Halim drives down a dark road at night, and gets spooked out by a lorry tailgating him. Why is the lorry scary? What's the point of that scene?? It's completely saja je. At one point Halim and Nina walk by a completely random old lady who can see the ghost that's possessing Nina. Why? Saja. Echa is terrified of her mum becoming more and more possessed - then at one point when Halim carries her up to her room, the little girl too looks all ghostly and shit. Why? Saja. First it looks like there's only one long-haired female (it's always female) ghost terrorising Nina, but sometimes there's two of 'em. Why? Saja. The guy who turns out to be the villain is also the guy who warned Halim earlier about a curse placed on his family. Why did he do that? Saja. Halim is a skeptic, but turns out Usin and Man and Man's wife have like mad ghostbusting kungfu skillz. Why? Saja.

It's at times like this that I'd rather occupy myself by observing the audience around me. They were full of derisive comments at the countless stupidities of the plot. (Power goes out in Halim and Nina's house, Halim wants to go check the fusebox, Nina is freaking out and begging him to stay - and someone in the audience yells, "Ikut je laa!") I was beginning to feel proud of my fellow Malaysian moviegoer, that they're smart enough not to buy this shit shoveled at them. Then we got to the climax of the film, in which an imam and a bunch of kopiah-clad guys chant Quranic verses to exorcise Nina - and the whole audience went quiet. I'm hoping they'd just gotten bored, like I was, but I suspect it was because any kind of Islamic-themed content is enough to shut them up and go "rasa filem ni bes jugak, ada nilai-nilai moral dan agama." Sigh.

I guess I gotta give it up to Putri Mardiana, who displays impressive dedication when she stuffs bloody maggot-ridden fried eggs in her mouth. Rest of the time, all she does is look psycho, and she at least does that well. Esma Daniel is terrible - Halim comes across as an insensitive, willfully oblivious moron, even given the fact that he's written that way. Hafidzuddin Fazil plays the imam who exorcises Nina, and he speaks to a raving, wild-eyed, demon-possessed woman like he's ordering lunch. Zul Handy Black glowers a lot, and Riezman Khuzaimi looks slimy.

But the real star of the show here is Azhari Mohd Zain. This is the second movie of his that I've seen, and it is as steaming a turd as the first. Guy doesn't know the first thing about telling a story, let alone a horror story, let alone putting it to film. All he's doing here is throwing a bunch of "scary" stuff at the screen and calling it a horror flick. En. Azhari, you're a hack, an incompetent, and an utter failure as a filmmaker - and I bet either you or your producer David Teo paid duit kopi to Cinema Online for that review. Why would I make such an unfounded and malicious accusation? Saja.

NEXT REVIEW: Bodyguards and Assassins
Expectations: if it sucks, I'm blaming LoveHKFilm