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Eight teenagers
are having a holiday on an island
resort, which strangely is only attended by two
personnel without any guests at all. Although they are
warned not to roam to the back part of the island,
it doesn't take long before the teens break the rules
and thus raising the wrath of the island spirits.
Here we go again, given a very simple plot and story
that has been recycled so many times in so many
teen-horror movies. Boys and girls go to island/house.
Boys and girls meet ghosts. Some of them get killed
until the final survivors remain. They either survive
or die. That's it. So we just have to take a look at
how Jose Poernomo of Jelangkung presents this to the
audience, is it fun or terrible?
Shortly after we've been introduced to the characters,
it doesn't take long before we are brought into the
realm of “Modern Indonesian horror scenes” where loud
and deafening sound effects are the focus of the
soundtrack as well as the main tools to shock (or
deafen!) the audience, cued before and at the time that
the ghost appears, and other ridiculous scenes meant
to frighten the audience members. The entire film only
focuses on how these silly teens are terrorized by
the island's ghosts who still unashamedly take the
form of our notorious Sadako and Kayako of The Ring
and Ju-On, but this time also with the help of “Michael
Jackson”. You have to see the stills to get the idea.
The ghosts seem to be enjoying themselves very much,
as they appear in every 5-10 minutes or so (with those
loud bang noises of course!), although not as annoyingly
as in Malam Jum'at Kliwon. Jose Poernomo can actually
present good tension and fun for the scary scenes,
but I don't know why he decided to churn such scenes
so frequently that they quickly become stale. As the
location is on an island, there are plenty of scenes
where the boys and girls are having fun in their beach
outfits. Girls in swimming suits diving and swimming,
playing volley, sunbathing, etc. so they may expose
their “asset”, indeed part of what this movie tries to
sell to the audience. There are plenty of underwater
footage as well as underwater ghost appearances, so
this time our fake “Sadako” has to get wet pretty often!
During the final sequences, it seemed as if the director
had lost his inspiration as the action only revolved
around the remaining teens running and having their
feet grabbed by the ghost, then they escape, run
somewhere, then get grabbed again, and so on! But we
should commend on how Jose can handle good camera work
as he still manages to create tension and suspense
here and there. He also repeats what he did in
Jelangkung, such as scary moments using an ugly rag doll
which is executed quite well here, and also the final
shock at the end! I must also compliment the setting of
the hidden graveyard in the woods, which is quite good.
Don't expect anything from characterization, they're
just standard, paper thin characters. I couldn't even
remember their names. I simply labelled them like this:
the yacht owner, the boyish face, the goofy, the sexy,
the not-so-sexy, the dark skinned, the resort manager,
the resorts sexy waitress, etc. There isn't much left
to comment on the performers. Sadly.
Produced by MVP production house that is notoriously
churning cheap and silly TV soap operas or “sinetrons”,
certainly the studio won't even think to hire
experienced actors or talented young stars other than
stock company of fresh youngsters who rely on nothing
else than their cute, innocent, sexy, or even foolish
looks. Let alone their acting. With no complicated
screenplay, simple and silly story, why should we
hire good actors and actresses? Possibly this is one
of the producers' main credo nowadays.
Some blood. Nothing extraordinary.
Nothing special here. Hissing cue with cymbal
instrument, loud bang here, loud bang there during
ghost scenes, standard stupidity!
Jose Poernomo, what have you done? After the excellent
Jelangkung and somewhat-not-bad Angkerbatu, you come
up with this crap? Just like a cheap shoot'em up
action movie with no worthy plot relying on too many
gun plays that are sometimes meaningless, Pulau Hantu
is also completely reliant on sporadic but monotonous
scenes of ghosts terrorizing their victims so frequently
that the scary element goes lost. Anyway, the
cinematography, set decoration, and how the director
handled suspense in some scenes are still worth
complimenting to some extent. So, throughout all this
mess you can still have some occasional fun. Watch it
only if you don't have anything else to do.
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