{"id":51534,"date":"2025-08-07T07:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51534\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T07:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:51:13","slug":"indonesia-horror-opus-wins-at-fantasia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51534\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia Horror Opus Wins at Fantasia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThese days, you can apparently push a Cinderella only so far before she\u2019ll summon dark forces to destroy her entire wicked step-family, one by one. That at least is the basic idea behind \u201cThe Book of Sijjin & Illiyyin,\u201d officially a sequel to director Hadrah Daeng Ratu<\/a> and screenwriter Lele Laila\u2019s \u201cSijjin\u201d from last year \u2014 which, in turn, was based on the 2014 Egyptian hit \u201cSiccin,\u201d which generated seven followups of its own. But \u201cSijjin & Illiyyin\u201d is a stand-alone original:\u00a0neither a remake or direct narrative postscript to any of the above-noted films. Its ideas are comfortably familiar though, from the abused underdog who wreaks bitter occult vengeance on her persecutors to the various forms of ickiness (bugs, blood, \u201cboo!\u201d scares) deployed in that pursuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo it seems one of the less explicable decisions at this year\u2019s Fantasia Festival<\/a> that Ratu won the jury\u2019s best director prize for a movie that brandishes so many cliches of current Indonesian horror \u2014 in particular a willingness to crank up the histrionic hysteria level early and often. Still, within its limitations, this is a well-crafted, good-looking chiller that should please genre fans looking for the usual jolts, both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

\n\tA prologue finds a humble village family in distress, the mother and father soon dead as a result of an apparent demonic possession. (What brought on this occurrence doesn\u2019t get explained until much later.) But because dad had left another wife for this one, his demise lands daughter Yuli (played as a child by Firzanah Alya) in the unwelcoming, if more upscale household of a furious stepmother, Ambar (Nai Djenar Maisa Ayu). There, Yuli is treated as a servant and constantly reminded of her \u201cbastard\u201d status. That continues when the matriarch finally passes away 20 years later, leaving equally bilious offspring Laras (Dinda Kanyadewi) in charge. While no one else is ill-disposed towards the now-adult \u201cAunt Yuli\u201d (Yunita Siregar), others are too afraid of the mistress\u2019 spite to protest the constant humiliation of the poor young woman.<\/p>\n

\n\tPushed over the edge at last, Yuli gets a local shaman to help her curse the family with black magic. That is a nasty process which involves digging up Ambar\u2019s still-fresh corpse, then subjecting it to various grisly indignities night after night as retribution gets visited upon our heroine\u2019s persecutors. She spares no one, including the old lady\u2019s grandson (Sulthan Hamonangan), son-in-law (Tarra Budiman) and loyal employee (Banon Gautama). Teenage granddaughter Tika (Kawai Labiba), a devout Muslim, finds some shelter in faith, ballasted by the advice of local mosque\u2019s mullah (David Chalik). But that doesn\u2019t save her from experiencing many terrors, or her doubting mother Laras from still worse travails.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSijjin & Illiyyin\u201d is never dull, but it pretty much dashes from crisis to crisis, leaving little room for atmospherics or psychological depth. It could have benefitted the narrative to allow Yuli\u2019s character more of an evolution, rather than having her abruptly go from put-upon wallflower to smirking, seductive instrument of lethal vengeance. Other figures in the story remain one-note, though the actors all do their best.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time Laras is making like Linda Blair, malicious jinn power resisting that of Almighty Allah, the film has already gone down a familiar path of grotesque makeup, stunts and digital FX. As in the never-ending parade of ostensibly Christian exorcism movies, religious belief here seems like a superficial excuse for a stock array of supernatural hoodoo \u2014 no matter how many times Chalik\u2019s Abuyya pauses the action to mouth some healing doctrine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe result is more hectic, and dependent on gross-out imagery (worms, torn flesh, etc.), than it is scary. The best sequences allow for some building of suspense, like the fate of Gautama\u2019s flunky while closing the family shop at night, or an episode when Tika is chased by her possessed mother in their house. There are a lot of stock viewer-goosings: Screaming ghoul faces, crawling insects, waking nightmares and other jump scares, including the sonic kind of sudden loud noises or silences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRatu knows how to engineer such things expertly, but she and writer Laila \u2014 both horror specialists \u2014 are treading no new ground here. Indeed, as they\u2019ve respectively churned out six and 13 features (including several collaborations) in the last 18 months or so alone, it shouldn\u2019t surprise that \u201cBook\u201d has a formulaic feel. It\u2019s crafted with some care and considerable energy. But conviction, not to mention inspiration, are somewhat lacking.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, this is a cut above genre average, with admirable production values and a modest storytelling scale. Cinematographer Hani Pradigya\u2019s handsome widescreen images and editor Wawan I. Wibowo\u2019s brisk pace are complemented by Andre Harihandoyo and Rahadian Winursito\u2019s appropriately menacing, if sometimes over-emphatic original score.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These days, you can apparently push a Cinderella only so far before she\u2019ll summon dark forces to destroy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,32152,35114,337,35115],"class_list":["post-51534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasia-festival","tag-hadrah-daeng-ratu","tag-movies","tag-the-book-of-sijjin-and-illiyyin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}