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Satan's Slaves (2017) N
An Indonesian horror that combines the typical Asian creepy ghosts with traditionally more western topic of satanic cults.
A former singer and mother of four children has been sick for years. Finally she dies but soon strange things start to happen: apparitions, moving objects, voices and the mother talking through the radio. Even local imam doesn't seem able to help. Oldest child, a girl called Rini, and imam's son finally find someone who knows what's happening but is there a way to save her family?
Satan's Slaves starts like many other Asian horror films (this is not a bad thing, just mentioning the facts). It's rather slow, has fair amount of ghastly apparitions and genuinely creepy atmosphere. The introduction of the satanic cult during the second half doesn't improve the film in any way and towards the end good scenes become more and more rare. There are quite a few unanswered questions in the end almost like they've left an option for a sequel.
Visually the film looks good but many scenes are pretty dark so it's hard to find good screenshots for a review. Scares are generally working but hardly surprising to anyone with some familiarity with Far Eastern horror. Soundtrack is quite good but again not extremely original. Acting seems mostly fine but it's little hard for me to evaluate with languages I'm not used to hearing (especially when their intonation is radically different like Indonesian and Thai).
So I liked the first half more than the second. It has your typical horror film issues of shallow characterizations due to too much time spent on being spooky. It had one very Fulci-like scene with totally unexpected level of gore out of nowhere (kinda like the fall in Don't Torture a Duckling). It's not bad at all but I was little disappointed by the whole cult aspect.
An Indonesian horror that combines the typical Asian creepy ghosts with traditionally more western topic of satanic cults.
A former singer and mother of four children has been sick for years. Finally she dies but soon strange things start to happen: apparitions, moving objects, voices and the mother talking through the radio. Even local imam doesn't seem able to help. Oldest child, a girl called Rini, and imam's son finally find someone who knows what's happening but is there a way to save her family?
Satan's Slaves starts like many other Asian horror films (this is not a bad thing, just mentioning the facts). It's rather slow, has fair amount of ghastly apparitions and genuinely creepy atmosphere. The introduction of the satanic cult during the second half doesn't improve the film in any way and towards the end good scenes become more and more rare. There are quite a few unanswered questions in the end almost like they've left an option for a sequel.
Visually the film looks good but many scenes are pretty dark so it's hard to find good screenshots for a review. Scares are generally working but hardly surprising to anyone with some familiarity with Far Eastern horror. Soundtrack is quite good but again not extremely original. Acting seems mostly fine but it's little hard for me to evaluate with languages I'm not used to hearing (especially when their intonation is radically different like Indonesian and Thai).
So I liked the first half more than the second. It has your typical horror film issues of shallow characterizations due to too much time spent on being spooky. It had one very Fulci-like scene with totally unexpected level of gore out of nowhere (kinda like the fall in Don't Torture a Duckling). It's not bad at all but I was little disappointed by the whole cult aspect.