Horror Hackery
posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 in Movie Reviews
For a couple of years now, we’ve been trading horror movies with other nations in Southeast Asia. This Southeast Asian horror exchange program has mostly served to fill gaps in release schedules with movies in the predictable, totally recognizable Asian Horror genre. The Chanting 2 (Kuntilanak 2 in Indonesia) is the latest product to make our shores, and like practically everything else before it, it’s a terrible mess of genre elements and gimmicky, shock based filmmaking. The movie follows the events of the first Kuntilanak movie, which is already a bit of a problem. Samantha is a girl with a terrible power: her chanting can bring about the Kuntilanak, a horrible monster that just kills people. In the first movie, the Kuntilanak killed the residents of a boarding house Samantha was staying in. Now, Samantha has gone on the run, but she’s being chased by the members of a Satanic cult that aims to gain control of her power for nefarious purposes. Samantha is left with no choice but to try and gain control of her power, to help her fend off those with evil intentions.
I don’t suppose many people here watched the first Kuntilanak, which makes caring about some of these characters a little difficult. But okay, let’s just pretend that it doesn’t matter, and that the entire thing can be watched on its own. The story still isn’t good, with situations that just don’t make any sense, and characters who can’t seem to make a rational choice to save their lives. The villains, in particular, are a bad mix of unclear motivations and really horrible planning. How do you catch someone who can summon an indomitable monster that can kill you in an instant? One would predict that your plan ought to involve more than carrying sharp objects. One would also be pretty disappointed.
As with most Asian Horror features, the film is composed mostly of gimmicky editing and random scare shots. Kuntilanak 2 doesn’t really do much to build up to its scary moments, the Kuntilanak itself just popping into frame every now and then. Most of the sequences are just poorly thought out. There are a couple of fight scenes that don’t look very convincing. Most of the death scenes are so choppy and gimmicky that it’s difficult to get a feel for anything that’s going on. The film also undermines itself with its ridiculous, overdone score. Kuntilanak 2 is the only Asian Horror film that has no appreciation for silence, filling every single scene with its overbearing orchestral music. It churns on and on, dissipating all the tension by basically declaring that the scene is supposed to be scary. It also doesn’t help that the subtitles for the film are horrible.
Julie Estelle plays Samantha, the main character of the movie. The character itself is pretty poorly written, with little to no emotional growth all throughout. But even if it was well written, I doubt Estelle could’ve sold us on it anyway. Her delivery is very wooden, even in the parts where she’s supposed to be really giving it her all. Evan Sanders plays Agung, Samantha’s boyfriend, and he goes the complete opposite direction, playing every scene as if it was his last. Granted, the material isn’t very strong, but his delivery just makes everything feel silly.
To top it all off, Kuntilanak 2 ends with a cliffhanger. Nothing actually gets resolved in one hour and forty-five minutes. It feels like they were just stalling for time and trying to get people to buy into a third Kuntilanak movie. It just feels like a waste of time. Indonesia is producing some really great movies, but all we ever get from our neighbors are the terribly generic, formulaic, poorly made Asian Horror hackery so rampant in our region. This really needs to stop already.
My Rating:
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