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A couple of
friends encounter the urban legend about
the ghost in the casablanca tunnel, only to realize
that one of them was responsible for her death. Creepy
things encounter as the movie progresses, and one by
one the friends start to turn up dead.
Oh... my... gawd! I've seen some funny movies but man,
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. It's only
unfortunate that Terowongan Casablanca wasn't intended
to be funny. They say that any wannabe-director with a
ghostly script can get movie funding in Indonesia these
days and it must be true as Terowongan Casablanca is,
well, let's just say that it must have said "scary
white ghost" on every single page in the script.
Usually when I review movies I write maybe six or
seven comments in my notebook while watching the movie,
but with Terowongan Casablanca I filled 4 pages. So
now the only problem is, where do I start?
Well, let's begin with the "plot", shall we? According
to the legend (this is loosely based on true events),
the casablanca tunnel in Jakarta is haunted by a woman
who made an unsuccessful abortion some time ago and
died as a result of it. And naturally, a couple of
friends are about to find out that the legend is real.
The little story that this movie had was directly
stolen from the Thai horror hit "Shutter", even the
twist. Unfortunately for them, they didn't have enough
money to do great special effects, so instead they
crammed countless of cheap effects in every scene.
But before we get into the cheap effects, I want to
talk about the sound effects / sound recording. The
volume is very uneven so sometimes you can't hear what
the actors are saying at all, while seconds later you
hear them way too loud. At first I thought that this
was just due to bad sound recording, but this also
happens with the music so I'm thinking that bad editing
is the cause of this. The bad editing can also be
blamed for the ridiculous amount of loud scare noises
that have been crammed into every single fram of the
movie. Seriously, since when is EVERYTHING scary?
If there are knocks on the door - scary music.
A bird flying in the air - scary music.
The door bell ringing - scary music.
Babies crying - scary music
You get the idea. It was ridiculous. I laughed so hard
that I actually had to take a toilet break to avoid
pissing my pants. The bad actors act with the sound
effects as well so when the doorbell rings, the actor
would be screaming in panic. Perhaps doorbells are a
horrible thing in Indonesia, I don't know, but usually
when the doorbell rings here - our first instinct is
not to scream and bite our nails.
Then we have the incompetent director and his frantic
camerawork. This was almost even more amusing to watch
as he zooms in on a person in three quick flashes only
to have the third flash end with a big banging sound
before he zooms the camera back out in the same flashy
way. This happens several times throughout the movie
and I think it's meant to make the viewer scared, but
it's definitely hard to get scared when you're laughing
so hard that tears are coming out of your eyes.
The director actually gets so caught up in his cheap
special effects that he forgets all about the thin
red line in the movie and all of a sudden the ghost
starts appearing everywhere - not just inside the tunnel,
which was pretty much the entire concept behind the
movie in the first place. Luckily he makes up for this
by giving us several hilarious shots were the ghost
appears from out of nowhere (you can clearly see how
they paused the camera while the ghost changed positions
and then started shooting again as the actors find it
impossible to stay still during those two seconds).
If you think this sounds bad, I still haven't told
you about the laughs that the ghost makes. The laughs
range from a hysterical high-pitched laugh to an evil
low-pitched "moahahaha" laugh. You know, like the ones
that evil villains in cheesy superhero movies do.
Seriously, the scariest moment in this "horror" flick
was when the ghost pulled a shower curtain back and
forth to scare a girl trying to go to the loo. Yep,
you guessed it, I had to run to the toilet again to
avoid pissing my pants from laughter.
This is the funniest horror movie I've seen in a long
time but at the same time the most atrocious one in
recent memory. I can't believe people are allowed to
make movies this bad. I'm in shock.
The ghost occasionally looks a bit gory.
The soundtrack was absolutely horrible and brings a
new meaning to the word overpowering. Except for the
dance music that is, the dance music was extremely
fresh and modern and extremely competent. Best thing
about this movie, heck, I wanna know who was behind
one of those songs as it got me moving.
If you're looking for a movie so bad that you won't be
able to avoid laughing through the entire thing,
Terowongan Casablanca is the movie for you. This is
the most incompetent film I've seen in a loooong time,
I can't believe this movie actually made a killing at
the Indonesian box-office. Man must they have poor
taste in movies over there. No offense.
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