Khurafat
My rating:




So, Syamsul Yusof - progeny of Yusof Haslam, whom eye-eye-are-see is the first local filmmaker to hit RM1 million box-office (minus inflation) - won Pengarah Terbaik for Evolusi KL Drift 2 at FFM23 last year. Which I suppose was deserved, if only because that movie had the most technically accomplished stunts of any local film to date. But I also said that Syamsul seems to be a far worse screenwriter than he is a director (his abilities as an actor lie somewhere in the middle), which does not put him on my list of Filmmakers To Watch Out For. Even when he ventures into horror for the first time - and even when it garnered positive reviews from local movie bloggers Tontonfilem and Ajami Hashim.

Sorry guys. Still didn't like it.

Johan (Syamsul Yusof), newly wedded to Aishah (Liyana Jasmay), is by all appearances a good person, loving to his wife, filial to his mother (Fauziah Nawi), and successful in his medical career. Only his ex-girlfriend Anna (Sabrina Ali), whose obsessive love for him reaches the point of suicidal depression, mars his happiness. Then ghostly manifestations start occurring to both Johan and Aishah, and Johan suspects that Anna has placed a supernatural curse on them. But a mysterious old custodian (Mariani) at his hospital may also know something about the horrifying visitations.

A quick digression on Malay horror movies. Early in Khurafat, there's an exorcism scene in which this imam drives an evil spirit out of some old guy's body, and he does this by doing nothing more than recite Quranic verses. Now, I know this is a reflection of modern Malay-Muslim society that believes Nothing Is Awesomer Than Islam, Y'all - but it also means we'll never make a truly great horror movie. I mean, if any manner of supernatural threat can be pwned by reading from a book found in every Malay household in the country (in perfectly-accented Arabic for extra powah), then how can it ever be scary?

Anyway, that exorcism is a bit of a head-scratcher; you'd think it'd be relevant to the storyline later on, but it isn't. It certainly doesn't work as a red herring, which is what Syamsul probably intended it to be since there's plenty of those here. See, this movie has a twist ending, and although it may be a spoiler just to reveal this, I can't properly review it without doing so. I can say that I didn't see it coming, which is a compliment to its plot and how well it doled out its (other) red herrings. It's the kind of ending that puts everything that came before in a new light, and it's most likely the one thing that's been garnering Khurafat its good reviews.

But it didn't work for me, because it didn't redeem the lameness of everything that came before. Syamsul's weakness for idiotically on-the-nose dialogue is as evident as ever, not to mention his penchant for grammatically impeccable sentences. His scripts might score A1s for SPM Bahasa Melayu, but they sure don't sound like anything real people say. Wahai barisan pelakon, korang tak rasa kekok ke, mengucap dialog ni? And then there's his portrayal of Anna, who is just insanely stupid and pathetic. All she does is bawl about how much she loves Johan and beg him to take her back, and we get some three or four scenes of her doing just this. Which again points to Syamsul's buku-teks-Darjah-4 writing style. (I feel sorry for Sabrina Ali, whose first major film role is of such a wretchedly annoying character.)

So yes, this movie lost me at hello. I couldn't help noticing its other instances of dumb storytelling; for example, Anna attempts suicide by mutilating herself gruesomely, and Johan intervenes in time to send her to the hospital. Later he goes back to see her... at her home? She got discharged so fast? Do Malaysian medical facilities not provide suicide watch? Most likely this is yet another instance of Malay movies portraying a world that lacks basic civil services. Jika anda berada didalam Van Jenazah yang ditimpa kemalangan jalanraya, apa anda akan buat? Guna henpon panggil ambulans, panggil polis, panggil PLUS Ronda? Johan tidak. Dia pikul jenazah tu pergi rayau-rayau tengah hutan.

And as for whether or not it's scary, my answer is a hearty, resounding "eh". It's the same old creepy long-haired icky-complexioned female ghost-type scares - well-staged, but seen a dozen times before. They're pretty much arbitrary, as if the ghost is operating on an alternating schedule of scaring the shit out of Johan and Aishah every 18 hours or so, just for teh lulz. More than once, a scary scene even cuts to the scaree waking up to realise it was a dream - the cheapest of cheap scares. I just wonder why Johan, knowing full well there's a jembalang haunting him, still insists on working late hours in dimly-lit hospital offices and corridors. Tak reti bukak lampu ke? He's also a moronically passive protagonist who hardly does anything to solve his hantu problem. His reaction upon coming face-to-face with the spirit is to close his eyes and, I dunno, think of his mum's gulai daging or something.

Now I did say the overall plot was well-constructed, and the twist ending works reasonably well. (There's a bit of foreshadowing in an early scene which reveals Johan's insecurity about his humble financial standing, which was a nice touch.) All of which are admittedly rare and precious qualities in local films. But I can't find it in me to give it even an extra half-star for this, because a somewhat-clever twist ending alone does not a good movie make. Terrible dialogue, one-dimensional characters (waste of Liyana Jasmay, who deserves better roles than this), clichéd scares, all add up to a film that I just plain disliked. In fact, now that I think about it, the entire storyline is ripped off of a certain popular Asian horror movie from the past decade. Maybe that's where the good parts of Khurafat came from.

NEXT REVIEW: Faster
Expectations: haven't seen a good Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson movie in ages