Set in one of Indonesia’s toughest prisons with brutal guards and the corrupt politicians getting their own special block (“this isn’t Norway!” indeed!) a serious of gruesome murders start occurring upon the transfer of the weedy journalist Dimas to the prison. At first the prisoners fight each other, but pretty soon work out in order to stay alive they need to work together to find out what the vengeful spirit wants and why it is connected to Dimas.

For such a brutal horror movie I did not expect this to be so funny. There is a lot of funny scenes that are right next to the horror scenes and even the “big bad” killer is a parody of himself, sticking his entire fist in his mouth and drooling to ham it up “I’ll split you in half boy!”.

There are lot of ice-cold barbs in the script like the prisoners commenting it only counts as terrorism if it is against Muslims and not other religions and the rich and powerful getting off relatively lightly. Even the Christians trying to get into the prayer room to repair their “aura” after one of the killings was funny.

I could not look during the brutal scenes but did enjoy the composition of how the evil spirit left its victims as they were quite artistic. The whole thing is quite absurd. The prisoners all run to their cells and start praying/singing/dancing as soon as the warden is tied into a knot in the rafters, they set him up to do so!

A bit of a misdirect in the trailer it does seem to set this movie up as a Raid-like movie with horror elements. To be sure there is fighting but it is more played for laughs and people have to stop fighting and get beaten up instead of their aura turns red.

Indonesian horror is built different alongside their action movies, seems to be a lot more of the spiritual elements from their culture entering this movie. Even the ghost is meant to be a “forest spirit” not that I have heard as much before. If you are a fan of this director, I would check it out.

Movie details:

Director: Joko Anwar

Producer: Tia Hasibuan

Screenwriter: Joko Anwar

Cinematographer: I.C.S, Ical Tanjung

Composer: Aghi Narottama

Editor: Joko Anwar

Production Designer: Dennis Sutanto

Costume Designer: Monika Paska

Key Cast: Bront Palarae, Abimana Aryasatya, Endy Arfian, Morgan Oey, Lukman Sardi

Year: 2026

Length: 106 mins

Country: Indonesia

Language: Indonesian

Genre: Horror

Victorian Premiere

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFXiJb8UqaE