PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves is screening at Fantasia Fest 2018, and it might just be the scariest movie you’ll see at the event – or all year, for that matter. The Indonesian horror film has already enjoyed success in its home country, but now it’s poised to take over the globe. Fear is universal, after all.
Between Satan’s Slaves and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, it should now be common knowledge that, if you hear a bell ringing, your life is about to take a drastic turn for the worse.
Set in the 1980s, the film centers around a family who has had their lives upended by their once-successful mother’s sudden illness. Siblings Rini (Tara Basro) and Tony (Endy Arfian) dedicate their lives to caring for their sick mom (Ayu Laksmi), while also looking after their two little brothers, Bondi (Nasar Annuz) and Ian (M. Adhiyat), who is mute. As their mother’s condition worsens, each sibling is separately exposed to strange supernatural phenomenon, usually involving their mom. The occurrences only increase in intensity after their mother passes away, and the children begin to suspect that they don’t know the whole truth about the woman who raised them.
Joko Anwar proves unafraid to draw from his supernatural influences, as Satan’s Slaves frequently utilizes a classic haunted house aesthetic in conjunction with its well-worn setup. Like James Wan’s Conjuring series, however, Anwar merely dabbles in these old-school techniques while subjecting the viewer to a contemporary brand of horror. In this case, that modern style is revitalized by an unpredictability and a willingness to allow this story to patiently grow into an absolutely berserk nightmare. Down to the nook, Anwar utilizes the creepy home like a machine that’s built to instill terror deep within our souls, toying with fears that plague everyone’s childhoods, while continually picking at the scab of what scares us now: losing those we love, and uncontrollable harm coming to our children.
Anwar especially succeeds in the way that he expertly manipulates our imagination throughout the film. There are many instances in which the director will show his hand and lead us toward an expected moment of fright, only to subvert those expectations and scare us in a new way entirely. Imagine the scene in Jurassic Park when Muldoon is hunting raptors. The dinosaurs trick him into focusing on a certain direction, then they shred him to pieces from the side. Joko Anwar is a Velociraptor, and we are all his prey.
The frightened performances from the cast are stellar as a whole, but it’s in their lifelike chemistry and connection to each other as grieving siblings who are being tormented by an entity they don’t understand that truly graces Satan’s Slaves with a soul. Without a conduit for our caring, every scare would be stakeless and empty. These performances ensure that the scares are successful.
Though not without its conventional moments and occasional reliance on supernatural horror tropes, Satan’s Slaves largely defies expectations, delivering one of the year’s scariest movies. The cast is great, the story twists in ways that you won’t expect, and Joko Anwar pulls the strings in ways that suggest a wildly successful future within the genre. This isn’t your typical haunted house movie, so don’t you dare let it pass you by.
To read another writer’s take on Satan’s Slaves, hop on over here.
