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Rai, a
writer-wannabe, is working on his novel about
Genderuwo, a legendary ghost. During his work he
often experienced dreadful apparitions that drove him
crazy. He even killed his own wife during his madness.
Arrested and detained in an asylum, he managed to
escape and take sanctuary in a house by taking the
young housewife as hostage. He never thought that the
asylum would be better than this house...
As a sane human being and a long time movie watcher
it's very hard for me to consider Genderuwo as
a movie. OK, it starts out somewhat convincingly.
After the production logo appears, then the large
title of "GENDERUWO" in red bold font emerges with the
"intended-to-be-scary" cue sound. The movie is even
presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, quite rare for most
Indonesian movies these days which are mostly in
1.78:1. Then comes an opening text about Genderuwo
that says something along the lines of "Genderuwo is a
mythical creature famous among Javanese people etc,
he's big, he's bad, and don't ever try to mess
with him bla bla bla and so on. Indeed, in Indonesian
folk lore, Genderuwo is a kind of ghost that usually
dwells and guards an abandoned old house or large old
tree. Genderuwo is sometimes portrayed as horny ghost,
if a woman is left alone by her husband, Genderuwo may
impersonate her husband and have sex with her!
Unfortunately, the opening text is where all the
good things end. Then you will enter the realm of
torture and insult towards our intelligence.
The screenplay seemed as if it was written by a
kindergarten kid or worse, by the Genderuwo creature
itself. On second thought, Genderuwo creature could
probably make a better screenplay than the idiotic
writer of this movie. The dialog is so unnatural,
awkward, weird, and I suspect it's not originally
written in Indonesian, so the script is allegedly a
very rough Indonesian translation from its
God-knows-which-original-language. What about the
performance? The male character, Robby Shine as Rai,
is sometimes pictured as crazy, sometimes normal,
then back into madness again. Bah! Watching him act
may turn YOU insane! The female character is played by
Davina Veronica, who actually act much better in other
movies. Here, she's just sleepwalking, no emotions or
feelings, but this is also due to the awful script.
The other supporting cast members aren't much better,
competing to show their level of foolishness and
indeed, they are successful. All of them, the
policemen, doctor, the wife, sister, and noodle
seller characters in this movie look terribly foolish.
Then how about the scares? This abominable director,
KK Dheeraj, God knows where and how he learned to make
movies, decides to insult our intelligence severely.
Assisted by silly cue music as usual, whenever he
wants to show his ghost, he displays the ugly creatures
by zooming in and out with the help of blue and red
lighting. This sequence is usually started by slow
motion, and so crude it even shows pixels! He
thinks this stupid technique will scare the audience.
Is he naïve or even brainless? Actually, even as a
whole, a mobile phone video camera might produce better
quality than shown in this movie!
The “Genderuwo” creature itself is portrayed as ugly and
hideous, a combination of gorilla and bear, but
it looks more like a monster action figure. Had this
ugly creature actually slashed some of its victims in
a gory fashion instead of just sticking its head out
every now and then, it may have ended up being decent
but it didn't and it's not.
There are other worse things though. The taglines read
“The scariest ghost in the world! Prepare your
courage!” and “A horror movie with different taste
and quality”. Yeah, after having finished watching
this, reading those taglines makes me want to puke.
This movie even promotes itself by using special effects
created by experts from Hollywood! Hollywood my ass!
And they unashamedly display their academic title in
credit sequence as well as country of origin, for
instance “Mr. who-the-hell-is-that (USA), and
Mr. what’s-his-face (India), etc.” so they think that
everything outside of Indonesia would look great.
Finally I must say that I can still point a lot more
shitty features of this movie but in the end, it would
only waste my energy and time. The only good things
that can be done for this movie is to send it to a movie
making academy or institute and show it as a "What
not to do" feature.
You must be joking.
Silly cue sound to shock and deafen the
audience. Perfect company for this foolishness.
Genderuwo is a clear example of stupidity
combined with greed to rake profit during the horror
fever of Indonesian movie industry. If you want to see
such stupidity, you may watch Genderuwo. It's an
insult to human intelligence, and to the legend of
Genderuwo itself.
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