In short: Gundala (2019)

An orphan learns that he has divinely inspired superpowers. Combined with the martial arts skills taught him by an older orphan during his worst times, this makes him prime superhero material. Eventually, reluctantly, the grown-up version of our orphan turns into the masked hero Gundala (Abimana Aryasata) to fight off a demonically (well, the Indonesian equivalent of demons, really) inspired rich man (Bront Palarae) with a very complicated mad rich villain plan, and his small army of orphan assassins. There’s also a subplot about ancient evil that only makes partial sense to the uninitiated like me, but is most probably in here to prepare the future of this superhero universe, as is the short appearance of Sri Asih (Pevita Pearce), who has her own prequel film following this.

Directed by the great Joko Anwar, this is the first entry into a proposed big Indonesian comic book based superhero universe, the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe. Because very little of this stuff has made it into languages I can understand, I really can’t say how this connects/compares to the comics. I always find it fascinating how standard super hero tropes are treated through a slightly different cultural lens (see also the riches of Filipino superhero movies of decades past, or Japanese tokusatsu cinema), and it certainly makes a very nice change from the Marvel and DC styles, even if you don’t understand every cultural nuance. And you’ll hardly get this movie’s class war aspect from Hollywood.

Of course, there’s so much here that’s universal to the subgenre – heroes being heroic and all - the film is still easily understood and related to even for an audience outside of Indonesia.

Anwar is of course a fine director, and I appreciate the film’s complicated sort of leftist touches, but I do think Gundala does spend a little too much time on our hero’s horrible misadventures as an orphan. Some of it has a pay-off later on, but I do prefer my origin stories generally a bit shorter unless the length is absolutely necessary. The pace is in general a bit more leisurely than it needs to be.

That our main villain’s plan only makes very little logical sense is no problem whatsoever in the context of this kind of project, of course, and Anwar (who also scripted with Harya Suraminata) uses the dubious logic to set up some fine and fun set pieces for Gundala to fight his way through. The fight and action choreography is generally fine, not quite as inspired as in some modern Indonesian action movies, but individual enough to be fun and have heft when the plot actually needs it.

Which certainly makes for a promising start for this particular universe.

Satan’s Slaves: Communion (2022)

Original title: Pengabdi Setan 2: Communion

1984. Having soured of country life and fallen on financial hard times, the surviving members of the Suwono family are now living in a large, ugly and dreary apartment building. Daughter Rini (Tara Basro) has taken on the role of the family’s replacement mom, putting her own future on the backburner to take care of her brothers Toni (Endy Arfian) and Bondi (Nasar Annuz), who seem to have grown into very typical teenage boys. So Toni is infatuated with an older, hot pants-affine neighbour Tari (Ratu Felisha) and Bondi does love some youthful farting around. Only father Bahri (Bront Palarae) seems to visibly suffer from the trauma of the first film. At least, he’s acting very strangely indeed: he doesn’t tell his kids what and where he is working, locks up his briefcase as if it were full of secrets, and has an in turns shifty and absent manner. He clearly loves his family, though.

Given what happened in the first movie, it’s really no surprise Bahri has grown strange, and living in mid-80s Indonesia, with its dictatorship and the daily disappearances that were part of it can’t have helped. There are also police reports about a sniper shooting tattooed men, adding even more tension.

Said tension increases around the time when a heavy storm hits the apartment building – it’s literally built too close to the water in the middle of nowhere – and locks in the place’s inhabitants. Obviously, quite a few strange and horrible things begin happening in that night (and shortly before), and it is all connected to the pasts of Rini’s family.

If you ask me, Communion’s director Joko Anwar is one of the best directors working in horror today. After the incredible Impetigore und his rethinking of the Indonesian classic Satan’s Slaves, this sequel to the latter shows someone working at the height of his power.

Ironically, given how tight those other two films are, Anwar’s script this time around is the weakest element of the affair. On paper, there are just too many moving parts, too many characters moving around independently, and there are rather a lot of scenes where they act exclusively after the kind of horror movie logic following which it makes total sense to fart around with a body of electrified water, to crawl through holes in walls, or look for the hidden upper floor of a building that’s haunted as hell. The set-up for a sequel isn’t terribly well integrated into the film either; one might also ask if having half of the film consist of various characters walking through the same dark apartment complex really is that great of an idea.

In practice, I found that none of these nominal problems mattered at all, because Anwar is utterly on top of his game in creating an atmosphere of dread, in pacing shocks and set pieces small and large, and in evoking the atmosphere of a very specific time and place with small, well chosen details where lesser directors would go all out and thus overshoot the mark. I’d argue that the time Communion takes place in is incredibly important for it. As much as the film actually seems to underplay it, its underbelly is all about a time in Indonesia’s history when paranoia and a hidden yet daily threat of violence must have done terrible things to the psyches of the people living through it. The barely parsable Satanic (perhaps Jinn) conspiracy running through the film feels like the logical embodiment of such feelings. Consequently, much of the film takes on the quality of a nightmare where neither home, nor family, nor the world itself seem as safe and consistent as they should be, where all social structures and their products are on the verge of complete breakdown, and logic applies to very little in life.

Even though Anwar uses a lot of classic horror tropes, and plots very loosely indeed, he on the other hand also seems to trust in his audience’s ability to put together a surprisingly large number of hints about what is actually going on strewn throughout the film. There’s certainly nobody going to explain anything in long, expository scenes here; we are apparently expected to correlate quite a few hints shown only for a moment or two, and to understand what they mean. There’s a total commitment to showing things and providing enough information to understand them but not explaining them that’s utterly admirable, and works very well indeed for me. This adds a dimension of mystery and thoughtfulness to a film that at first looks like a very tropey series of set pieces, and certainly keeps it in the mind longer.

Of course, those set pieces are absolutely incredible, realized by Anwar with an off-handed sense of stylishness, and created with a sense of the absurd as well as of the creepy, edited to perfection, and utterly engaging. The relatively early elevator sequence is an obvious example for the director’s abilities, but things stay suspenseful, tight and creepy, with actual pay-offs throughout the film, until the peculiar and inspired finale accompanies us out.