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Kinar is going
on a field trip with her classmates.
Upon departure she suddenly gets a mysterious
premonition where she sees the bus in flames, thus
resulting in the death of all passengers. As she gets
hysterical, she's removed from the group while some
friends accidentally separate from the group as well.
Terror strikes as Kinar's premonition comes true and
all of the passengers end up dead in the accident.
However, the terror doesn't end there as the survivors
soon start to turn up dead, one by one.
Oh well, after reading the plot description, all horror
fans have already figured out the similarity. Yes,
Miracle is a blatant rip-off of the legendary Final
Destination. Despite my pessimism I still decided to
watch it anyway since imitations can occasionally be
good to a certain extent. There are many examples of
how rip-offs, if done creatively, can still provide
good entertainment. Italian and Hong Kong B-movies
often copy Hollywood movies and many of them are still
fun to watch. I sure hoped that Miracle would turn out
this way but alas, this time I was wrong again.
I had actually already found out about the “rip-off
aspect” during the promotion of this film before its
release. And in fact, the promotion started about 3-4
months before its premiere – rather unusual for an
Indonesian movie. It is unclear why the release was
post-poned, possibly the producers gave more priority
to bigger budget horrors and left this crap behind.
Indeed, this crap is not Miraculous at all – it failed
miserably in distribution as predicted. As you can
expect from common Indonesian horror, this is another
teen horror. With fresh looks of sexy and cute girls
and boys as eye candy, surely you can't expect them to
be able to act very good. They can act as good as the
script, and the script sucks. So figure it out yourself.
Forget characterization, just usual stereotypes in most
cheap horrors: the main character Kinar, a girl who
gets premonitions is referred to as a geek, commonly
bullied by “popular” boys and girls (well, if that's a
geeky girl, geeky girls would get laid A LOT!), then
Satyo, Kinar's boyfriend the “good guy”, then a sexy
“bad girl” and her spouse, a “bad boy” plus more boys
and girls whose characteristics are easily forgotten.
The director even cast a young player who looks more
like a college boy than a high school teacher! Luckily
he dies quite early. There are totally eight of them,
but the paper thin characterization coupled with a dull
script makes them worthless to be noted. The original
Final Destination features plenty of deaths as a result
of mysterious accidents in gruesome and shocking nature.
Miracle also features plenty of deaths as a result of
accidents but in a dull, predictable, and even stupid
nature. The maker seems to try very hard finding
remarkable deaths but instead of being impressive it
ends up being foolish. The deaths range from strangulation,
a cabinet falling on the victim, and even electrocution
as a result of .. fixing an instrument! Such a dishonoured
and shameful way to die in horror movie!
Realizing its limitation as a copycat, the director
gives a twist ending – so as to make it different than
the original. Well, the “twist” is not twisted enough
and it's stupid. The production value is very low as well.
For instance, they try to present a car accident – but
surely since they don't want to pay stuntmen, cars to
wreck real bad, and most of all, no creative ideas to
cope with their budget limitation, they simply rely
on overblown heavy metal music plus shaky and rapid
camera movements to make it seem as if the cars are running
fast. The results are simply poor. It's such a pity
that the director is actually Helfi Kardit, the creator
of Lantai 13. She started poorly with “Bangku Kosong”
(Empty Chair), then did well with Lantai 13. Then she
ends up with this messy stuff. Even Bangku Kosong is
much more entertaining than this one. Oh heck, maybe
she needs money quite bad and this could be the only
project available.
Some blood, that's all.
Rock n' Roll theme plus annoying “intended-to-shock”
cue and effects, nothing to write home about.
Director Helfi Kardit states in her interview that
indeed there's a similarity between Miracle and Final
Destination, but they're different, although she
admitted that she was “inspired” by Final Destination.
So much for the stupid diplomacy - a rip-off is still
a rip-off, and Miracle is another pathetic copycat,
another suitable material for movie academy under the
subject “How not to imitate a classic horror-thriller.”
Recommended to be condemned.
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