A potentially confusing title for anyone more familiar with Norman J Warren’s work than Indonesian genre classics, Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves is a remake of a 1980 film of the same name. Anwar retains the 1980s setting and delivers a modern take on demonic possession, ritual and societal pressures. The film is currently screening at festivals worldwide, including Chicago’s Cinepocalypse, where it screened this past weekend.
Rini (Tara Basro) lives at home with her younger siblings Tony (Endy Arfian), Bondi (Nasar Anuz) and youngest Ian (Muhammad Adhiyat). Her mother Mawarni (Ayu Laksmi) is bed-bound by illness, while her father (Bront Palarae) and grandmother (Elly D. Lutha) struggle to maintain financial security for the family. When Mawarni dies, Rini is left to keep order on things while her father visits the city to settle up some finances. The household is increasingly disturbed as the boys all experience strange apparitions around the house. When the siblings discover their grandmother dead, an old acquaintance of the family (Egy Fedly) reveals long-kept secrets that might hold the key to the increasingly strange occurrences around them.
Satan’s Slaves is a wonderful haunted house movie that throws in elements of many other stalwart horror subgenres. Its scares are gloriously crafted with a couple of real stand-out sequences. These are heightened by a building sense of the familiar becoming unfamiliar, in both the living and the dead. The only distraction is its over-reliance on stingers, which unnecessarily under-line moments of fright, but put that aside and it’s a real fun house of a film. There are a few moments of slightly ropey SFX, but they’re totally negligible in the bigger picture of how well they’re used – including an unexpected moment of almost Fulci-esque gore.
There is certainly a lot going on in Satan’s Slaves, and there are a few changes in direction as the film progresses. As such you do have really be paying attention to keep up (I confess to uttering a ‘who are they, now?!’ at one point). The film manages its hefty narrative by rooting everything in its central family, though, lead mostly by Rini. Tara Basro gives a wonderful lead performance both in the quieter moments of domestic drama and the moments of out-right horror. The relationships between, particularly, the siblings are wonderfully constructed, and the performances from the younger actors are a delight.
There are thematic threads in the film that point to more slightly more profound concerns than fun-house scares – namely in the family’s secularity and their financial struggles. Mawarni was once a famous singer, and due to her illness the income her family receives has dried up, supposedly even from royalties. Tony sells his bike to help contribute to the household’s costs. Charmingly, none of the kids are bratty or annoying, even when they fight or irritate each other, which is quite the feat. The family also seeks help from the local religious leader, who suggests ways of dealing with the apparitions, and that perhaps this might not have happened had the family been stricter in their faith. The film is not so heavy-handed as to suggest right or wrong in either direction, which is entirely to its benefit.
Further to the film’s benefit is its rather magnificent look – the set dressing and costume design are spot on and provide a very rich sense of time and place. The rather cavernous bungalow in which most of the film’s scares take place is dressed sparsely but effectively – both for the set up of its scares and for portraying the sense of a once-wealthier family now facing hardship. Anyone who’s a sucker for period detail will likewise enjoy what’s on offer in the design.
Satan’s Slaves is a rock-solid scary film – characters to care about, well-paced and constructed scares and a deliciously creepy ending. Certainly, a film for repeat viewing, and I for one will be looking forward to seeing this title crop up elsewhere on the big screen before hopefully receiving a solid home release.
Our thanks to Cinepocalypse 2018 for granting us this preview of Satan’s Slaves.