Headshot (2016)

A man (Iko Uwais) with a headshot wound is washed ashore in a small Indonesian fishing town. Young doctor Ailin (Chelsea Islan), manning the place’s small clinic for a time, manages to save his life, and clearly develops a bit of a thing for him while he’s still in a coma. Because she’s reading “Moby Dick” at the time (she’s clearly a woman of excellent taste), she privately dubs the guy Ishmael. That name is going to stick once he wakes up, for he has only the faintest traces of memories of his past, so Ishmael he is now.

Of course, people do not find themselves getting shot in the head without a reason, and his past is going to catch up to him rather sooner than later. And because movie bad guys are cruel like that, Ailin and a random little girl are going to be dragged into his affairs rather more than anyone deserves; and Ishmael will learn that he’d probably rather have not remembered what the people from his past coming for him drag back to the surface again.

It’s really interesting to compare the joint Kimo Stamboel/Timo Tjahjanto feature Headshot with Tjahjanto’s directorial solo outing The Night Comes for Us. Both, once they get going, are action films of relentless pace, each of which contains about as much set-piece violence as two normal action films. As a matter of fact, you could argue that there’s a bit too much crushing of heads, shooting of bodies and so on and so forth, going on here, the directors clearly working from the theory that when one action scene is great, two must be even better. It’s a bit exhausting to watch at times, to be frank, but on the other hand, every single action scene (again in both films), is so inventive, so excellently staged, and so over the top in its violence, one can hardly blame a director for not leaving any one out. As a viewer, one simply needs to be prepared to be overwhelmed.

The films also share their tendency to be over-the-top gory, with so much blood and other bodily fluids bathing the surviving characters, the classic Japanese blood fountain seems rather reserved in comparison. Again, it might get a bit much for some viewers, but when you go in prepared for excess, you’ll have a great time simply mumbling “did they really just do that?”.

Headshot’s action is a bit different in nature than that of The Night, though, for where the later, Stamboel-less film is an action movie with martial arts sequences, this one’s very much a martial arts movie that puts most of its thoughts into coming up with new ways of getting two or a dozen people killed by Iko Uwais’s fists and feet. So there are quite a few moments echoing classic martial arts cinema, like the scene where Uwais has to fight off his attackers in a police station while handcuffed to a desk. The film also consistently sets Uwais against actors who are just as great screen fighters as he is, so there’s never a moment where we get the Indonesian version of having to pretend Keanu Reeves could beat Mark Dacascos in a martial arts fight. Now, if it where a contest in waving one’s arms around…But I digress.

The other big difference between the two films is in the nature of their protagonists. As Joe Taslim’s Ito in the later film, Ishmael has done terrible things, but where Taslim chose a life as a gangster and did have some, if dubious, degree of choice in his life (even though he tries to become a full human being eventually), Headshot’s protagonist is the victim of a man who kidnaps children, brainwashes them, and uses them as weapons, making him sympathetic even in his most violent moments. The film does use this quite cleverly to keep the audience’s sympathy on Ishmael’s side, emphasising the horror of his upbringing, the irony of him now using what has been taught to him to bring his “father” down, as well as the tragedy that the people he’s killing throughout the film – they don’t leave him much of a choice, mind you – are the closest he ever had to a family and loved ones.


It’s actually rather more cleverly done than you’d expect in a film that’s quite this fond of outrageous violence, but I for one am not going to complain about a film giving me the violence as well as some hidden complexities.

The Night Comes for Us (2018)

Indonesian Ito (Joe Taslim) has been working for the Chinese Triads as an international enforcer for three years now. But when he and his men are tasked with massacring a whole village, something in him changes, and he can’t bring himself to kill the last survivor, the little girl Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez). Instead, he kills his own men and flees with Reina to his native Jakarta, where he was a gang leader before he and his protégé Arian (Iko Uwais) had to hire themselves out to the triads to protect the rest of the gang.

There’s not much left of Ito’s old life. Most of his former friends and partners are dead or in jail. His former girlfriend Shinta (Salvita Decorte), his old friend and partner Fatih (Abimana Aryasatya), his frenemie Bobby (Zack Lee) and Fatih’s nephew Wisnu (Dimas Anggara) are really what’s left of his past relations. Ito’s not happy with getting them involved in his troubles, but he believes he needs all the help he can get to come up with enough money and resources to bring him and Reina out of the triads’ reach. For of course, the triads don’t take to Ito’s betrayal kindly, and have sent a veritable horde out to kill him and the little girl. Among them is Arian who doesn’t seem to be completely on board with the project.

Things are further complicated by the fact that the triads are using their search for Ito as an excuse to move in on Jakarta, eventually offering the local crown to Arian if he is willing to betray his old friends. Also involved is a nameless government killer (Julie Estelle), who actually may be on Ito’s side.

I’m pretty sure that once the production of Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes for Us was over and done with, there was no stage blood left in Jakarta, for the film is an unrelenting series of incredibly bloody action sequences. There’s a bit of obviously Heroic Bloodshed inspired personal business between men involved too, but the emphasis here is really on inspired on-screen violence that attempts to be as gritty and icky as the film can get away with – which is apparently a lot when you can get a deal with Netflix for distribution outside of Indonesia.

Tonally, the action is focused on that most tricky kind of choreography: creating fights that look and feel brutal and realistic, sloppy and inelegant like real fights do (probably), with a side note of desperation. Tijahjanto’s direction is tight, with a preference for action taking place in enclosed spaces that add a dimension of claustrophobia to the physical threat and the general violent insanity going around. The film also does what the more hyperviolently gritty side of action and martial arts cinema seldom does (because the hyperviolence makes this sort of thing rather difficult), defining characters through their fighting styles more than by the things they say: so Ito’s a brutal street fighter who just takes hits in the face and is willing to use just about anything to kill you, the government operator is controlled and efficient even when losing a finger or two, Bobby’s an insane berserker, and Arian’s at once elegant, and treacherous, and so on.


Inside of its basic tenet of being as brutal as possible, the film’s action is surprisingly diverse, with a whole load of fighting styles, action styles, and set piece ideas that never really repeat themselves beyond the good guys (good by default, because the bad guys are definitely even worse) being outnumbered, so the film’s action never becomes monotonous despite being quite so unrelenting. The whole blood and guts style of the affair - Tjahjanto’s experience in gory horror is always visible – puts this in great contrast to the much more antiseptic mass violence in something like the John Wick films that go for the videogame approach to bloody violence that may like a bit of gore, but prefers to ignore how messy, unpredictable and downright unpleasant all this bloody murder and human bodies are. Which isn’t to say that The Night Comes for Us is pretending to be more or deeper than it actually is, it’s just curiously human for a film this brutal.

Darah (2009)

aka Macabre

Adjie (Ario Bayu), his very pregnant wife Astrid (Sigi Wimala), his estranged sister Ladya (Indonesian horror mainstay Julie Estelle), and a handful of their friends are on their way to Jakarta. On a country road, they find a girl named Maya (Imelda Therinne) just standing around alone in the dark. Maya explains she has been robbed and asks for a ride home. After some hesitation, the group decides to help the girl out, for Astrid is a rather kind-hearted woman and Eko (Dendy Subangil), one of the friends, rather fancies Maya.

Once the party has arrived at Maya's place, a rather large house right in the middle of nowhere, the girl suggests everyone come in and meet her mother, who will surely be thankful to the strangers.

The group agrees. After all, they've already gone that far, and hearing a "thank you" is always appreciated. Little do they know that Maya's mother Dara (Shareefa Daanish) is the head of a little family of slowly aging (human meat has powers, as you'll remember from various other movies like Ravenous) cannibal butchers. Dara, her other two sons - Adam (Arifin Putra) and an overweight guy specialized in the arts of the butcher whose name I didn't get - and Maya don't just slaughter humans for themselves, but are also the meat providers for other cannibals (rich and evil, obviously) around Indonesia, so a carload of young people is excellent news to them, and rather bad news for said young people, who will soon have to fight for their lives and bacon.

Darah, a Indonesian/Singaporean co-production, was made by a pair of Indonesian directors (and writers and producers) calling themselves The Mo Brothers and features an Indonesian cast. It is based on motives and a character from the directors' short film "Dara" that was part of another international co-production, the US-co-produced omnibus film Takut, so I think I can safely assume that 1) The Mo Brothers really liked the character of Dara(h) and Shareefa Daanish's performance in the role and 2) unlike many other Indonesian directors and studios, these guys are interested in selling their films overseas, too.

Another indication for the truth of the second theory (I don't think the first one can be in any doubt at all) is how different Darah is to the endless masses of films brought up by the Indonesian horror boom of the 2000s. Mainly, this is not much of a supernatural horror film, but is rather oriented on the more Western horror sub-genre of backwoods horror/torture porn (two once distinct sub-genres that seem to have become one thanks to Hostel and its followers), so there are - unfortunately - no traditional Indonesian ghosts going around, nor - fortunately - is there much of the extremely low-brow humour on display that has ruined more than one Indonesian horror film.

The Mo Brothers don't go too far with their film's internationalisation, though. The pair is insightful enough to realize that local colour can only distinguish their film from the mass of other films populating their chosen sub-genre, so they have made a film that is a visibly Indonesian interpretation of torture porn, containing the local colour that evokes the kind of sense of place that can (and does) produce a more effective mood of threat and desolation than more generic surroundings ever could.

As should be obvious, Darah is still not a very original movie. I've seen its content (a bit of creepiness fastly turning into grotesque, slightly humorous violence) and plot a hundred times before, yet the Mo Brothers' film is executed so well I don't mind its lack of originality much. After all, the violence is creative, the pacing tight, the Brothers' direction technically pretty great without being distractingly flashy, the acting - from the more traditionally realist style of the victims to the non-blinking scenery-chewing staring of the cannibals - is good, and there's even a bit of characterisation for the victims that does not make them look like the douchebags and idiots that are traditionally the victims in this sort of film.

So Darah might be generic, but it sure is fun.

 

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Kuntilanak (2006)

aka The Chanting

Samantha (Julie Estelle) is a troubled young woman. Her life's like a certain type of country song: she is plagued by highly disturbing recurring nightmares, her mother just died, and something has happened that convinces her to keep her distance from her boyfriend Agung (Evan Sanders). And that's not enough. Her step-dad would very much like her to take her mother's place in his bed.

Obviously, Sam isn't going to live at home for much longer and moves into an exceedingly cheap boarding house specialized in catering to poor young people. I wouldn't know who else would want to move in there - the building is rather run-down, its entrance can only be reached by strolling through a small but creepy graveyard and nearly the first thing the landlady tells Samantha is that a Kuntilanak - a ghostly cross of white-haired corpse woman and horse with an unhealthy connection to children - is said to live in the big tree in the middle of the cemetery. While she claims not to believe in the Kuntilanak, the woman is wildly enthusiastic about the legend. She even sings Sam a chant that is supposedly used to summon the creature.

The chant has a strange effect on the girl, nearly letting her collapse on the floor.

Samantha's nightmares aren't stopping in her new home and while Agung, who studies psychology, tries to find out what his secluded girlfriend's dreams mean, ever stranger things start to happen.

Whenever Samantha feels threatened or upset, she falls into a trance-like state and starts to sing the Kuntilanak's chant. Her (not necessarily undeserving) victim bleeds from the nose, Samantha herself pukes maggots and a little later, the Kuntilanak pays a lethal little visit.

Apart from the ghost problem, there's something else just not right with the boarding house. Rumor has it that it belonged to a satanic cult that somehow used the Kuntilanak's powers to gain fortune. It really doesn't look to good for Samantha's health and sanity here.

Kuntilanak is a mighty fine part of the Indonesian share of the big Asian horror wave. The budget may be low, but director Rizal Mantovani is more than able to hide the rubberiness of his monsters. Even better: Mantovani has a real talent for using the decrepitude and decay of his locations to build a creepy mood and he avoids using too much jump cuts or other stylistic flourishes I still like to blame MTV for.

The plot isn't exactly what I'd call original, but the cliched elements the film is made of are put together cleverly and with classical genre verve. I may have heard this song a hundred times before, but the new cover version is still great. And look, it even has traditional Indonesian instruments (or ghosts), but uses them in a modern enough way.

It's also a nicely straightforward plot, without the sort of underhanded bad twists which have ruined more than one film for me with their insistence on acting as if there were no difference between inanity and cleverness. Instead, Kuntilanak puts its energy into old-fashioned values like logical plot progression, and not deep but believable characterization and wins at least my heart with craftsmanship you might as well call art.

The acting is very solid. Julie Estelle is a little awkward from time to time, but this awkwardness fits Sam's character better than your typical clever young method actor ticks would. Estelle is also quite adept at looking creepy into the camera while chanting, which is a real plus and she has no problems selling her character's thematically and plot-important inner strength while still seeming vulnerable. Sanders' Agung doesn't have much to do, but I'm certainly not going to complain about a film that decides to let its heroine rescue the hero and take care of her own troubles.

Kuntilanak is exactly the type of movie that can make me fall in love with genre movies again and again, doing the same thing every other film does, just better and with a handful of thoughtful changes to the formula that really make it worth my while.

 

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