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After getting
into some car trouble, a bunch of friends
decide to seek shelter in an abandoned hospital for
the night. What they don't know is that the hospital
has been cursed and is now crawling with vengeful
ghosts who will soon start to pick them off, one by
one. Will anyone survive this kliwon Friday?
Who knows what the heck a kliwon Friday is, but I'm
guessing it's Indonesia’s answer to All Hallows Eve.
Anyway, Malam Jumat Kliwon follows the latest trend
in Indonesian horror flicks and tries to scare the
viewer with loud noises, evil ghosts and a creepy
location. Naturally it doesn't work on any level and
since the scare effects are crammed into every single
frame of this movie, there's no real atmosphere or
tension to be found in here. I wasn't too surprised
since I had heard nothing but bad stuff about this
movie which used its director as its key selling point;
"from the best Indonesian horror director". Well that's
not really true. While Koya Pagayo is responsible for
two of the more watchable Indonesian horror flicks,
Lewat Tengah Malam and Hantu Jeruk Purut, he comes
nowhere near Rudy Soedjarwo.
The story is simple and the dialogue is minimal in
this rush job of a horror flick where a bunch of teens
end up crashing their car after a wild night out.
However, I'm not really sure what they crashed their
car into, in fact, the car barely seemed broken at all.
Had they only tried to turn the key around, I'm sure
that it would have worked perfectly. Anyhoo, the reason
as to why they crashed was because a young woman was
standing in the middle of the road trying to get help
since her boyfriend got lost inside an abandoned
hospital. The teens decide to help her find her
boyfriend since they need somewhere to stay for the
night anyway and soon find out that her boyfriend
didn't disappear at all, he was possessed by one of
the many ghosts that roam around the hospital corridors.
Now this may seem like a generic but decent premise
to you but the problem here is that nothing makes much
sense. There are so many flaws that I don't know where
to begin. Let's start with the minimal dialogue shall
we? For about one hour and ten minutes, all we get to
see is a bunch of teens running around screaming while
ghosts pop up every here and there for no apparent
reason. This was really annoying and the horrible
subtitles on the DVD (did they translate this with
Babelfish or something?) never really came in handy
since the actors barely uttered so much as a phrase
throughout the entire film.
Then we have the fact that this was supposed to be an
old abandoned hospital, there are even leafs on the
floor and cobwebs in the ceiling to prove it. And still,
the electricity seems to run quite smoothly. Hell, the
teens didn't even have to turn on the lights as they
were all ready on - who's paying the bill? The ghosts?
Furthermore, the fans are also working perfectly and
they just so happen to have a big spotlight behind them
to make things appear creepier than they are. Do I really
need to say more?
Malam Jumat Kliwon is obviously a rush job with the
sole purpose of milking the horror trend in Indonesia
before it's too late. Koya Pagayo has directed three
horror movies in less than a year, so naturally
quantity comes over quality for him, which is a shame
really because technically, Malam Jumat Kliwon isn't
all that bad. We've seen it before, and watching
hundreds of ghosts pop up from behind every corner
just isn't very thrilling.
An impalement and some fingers get chopped off.
Awful metal music and even worse suspense score.
Koya's worst horror flick to this date, but don't worry,
I'm sure they'll get a whole lot crappier as time goes
by since he seems to think that quantity is much more
important than quality. It turns out that a haunted
hospital where a bunch of stupid and almost mute teens
get chased by hundreds of ghosts really isn't as
amusing as you might think.
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