In short: The 3rd Eye 2 (2019)

Original title: Mata Batin 2

After a ghost-related family tragedy, budding psychic Alia (Jessica Mila) follows the advice of her mentor Bu Windu (Citra Prima), and takes a live-in social worker job at an orphanage for girls run by Laksmi (Sophia Latjuba) and her husband Fadli (Jeremy Thomas). Because it would be a rather sad example of a horror movie otherwise, the orphanage is of course haunted. A perfect job for our heroine. But when Alia and orphan Nadia (Nabilah Ratna Ayu Azalia), who also has an opened third eye, open the door to a hidden room to free a trapped ghost, they just might have unleashed more than they are prepared to deal with.

Despite – or perhaps because of – a rather cheap and cheerful disposition, I enjoyed Rock Soraya’s first 3rd Eye movie rather a lot, particularly its imaginative third act. Soraya, the writers and the important members of the cast return for this sequel, and it is even more fun than the first one. Soraya’s still a slick director, but this time around, he actually creates a bit of an Indonesian Gothic type of mood early on (which certainly fits the backstory once we learn it), framing scenes in the proper oppressive manner while taking care to still sell the basically decent orphanage as a place where sane people would actually put children, mostly by keeping the daytime parts of the orphanage light and only letting the place’s creepiness shine through when Alia and Nadia are on one of their nightly adventures. On the way, Soraya hits quite a few pretty traditional beats of contemporary ghost movies – The Conjuring with less of an insistence on jump scares and with ghosts based on Indonesian cultural traditions instead of random nuns and demons comes to mind. Pleasantly, the film also comes without a James Wan style tendency to have random supernatural crap appear only to have something to hang a spin-off on.

As a psychic detective, Alia’s not much better than the Warrens, what with her tendency to get herself possessed and brutally murder people in that state, of course, but she’s lacking the sanctimonious aura of the two, and usually doesn’t pretend to know things she doesn’t, so I’d rather see more of her adventures. Plus, Mila again throws herself into the possession sequences with abandon, adding little girl head movements to the screeching and the running when necessary, which is as fun as it sounds.


For the final act, The 3rd Eye 2 clearly does its best to get even more out there than the first part, turning its predecessors ten to a solid eleven by including a bloody home improvement style decapitation, another visit to the red realm of the nasty dead, some choice spiritualist kitsch, sudden shifts in protagonist, and all kinds of fun details, while also preaching the gospel of being forgiving of the people who murdered you. Best of it all is that there’s no sense of irony to any of it, the film treating visits from heaven and hell as matter-of-factly as a scene of someone baking a cake. It might not feel quite as full-on crazy as some Indonesian horror movies from the 70s did, but the spirit is clearly there, and I’m happy that Netflix puts its money where my taste is.

The 3rd Eye (2017)

Original title: Mata Batin

When her parents die in an accident, Alia (Jessica Mila) has to return from her new home in Thailand to her native Indonesia to take care of her teenage sister Abel (Bianca Hello). For financial reasons, they have to move back into their childhood home in the country, a place Abel fears with quite some intensity; or rather, she fears something dwelling in the house. As it turns out with good reason, for Abel is cursed with the ability to see the spirits of the dead and other supernatural manifestations, and as it usually goes, the dead see her right back. Alia has been kept in the belief that her sister simply has some psychological troubles, but as Abel explains to her, their mother had not been taking her to a psychiatrist as the family told Alia, but to the psychic Bu Windu (Citra Prima) to help her cope with her abilities.

Even on meeting Bu Windu, Alia still doesn’t quite believe what her sister is telling her, so she asks the woman to force open her own third eye, so she can see the things her sister says are there with her own eyes. This being a horror movie, ghosts and such are all too real, and soon, the two sisters, Bu Windu, and Alia’s frightfully nice boyfriend Davin (Denny Sumargo) will have to fight against the things haunting their home.

I love Netflix more than just a little bit for the surprising number of Indonesian genre films it has distributed over the last couple of years, making it pleasantly easy to actually watch some of the better movies coming from the country right now while also avoiding the “tight tops and horrible humour” subgenre that seems rather prevalent (though I might of course be totally wrong about that, seeing that international distribution for Indonesian films is – Netflix notwithstanding - spotty to say the least).

Rocky Soraya’s The 3rd Eye is no new masterpiece of horror cinema, but its mixture of typical “I see dead people” plot beats, Indonesian style creatures, a smidgen of possession horror with a very spirited performance by the actress involved, and a third act that goes into a surprising direction for this particular horror subgenre (though you can diagnose a Poltergeist influence, if you wish), is always at least entertaining, and often downright fun in a spook show kind of way.

As a director, Soraya (who also co-wrote the script and produced) lets a small budget look slick, generally tending to relatively conservative directorial choices while keeping the pace just right. He also clearly understands that the make-up effects and the creature design are one of the film’s strengths, and plays this aspect up as much as possible without things becoming (too) tacky. Add to this the surprising turn towards a bit of gore and violence in the third act as well as the pretty incredible climax of the film, and you have yourself something clearly made by someone who knows his horror.

Speaking of the climax, as a fan of theoretically visionary scenes made on a budget, I got quite the kick out of the way Soraya creates a hell dimension out of a handful of tunnels, some weeds, deftly applied red light, and a handful of actors in pretty great makeup, keeping the afterlife surreal, and surprisingly convincing. It helps that this part of the film – as well as the excellent scenes coming directly before – mostly keep away from CGI and go for more practical effects, for the digital effects throughout the film are much weaker than the practical ones.


So even though The 3rd Eye isn’t a deep movie that’s telling us much about the human condition, it’s quite a bit of fun if you’re in the market for a bit of horror not meant to evoke existential despair. Plus, there’s a cameo by a Ghost with Hole.