Kuntilanak (2018)
Kuntilanak is an Indonesian horror (and sort of) comedy that came out in 2018 in the language of Indonesian.
For the short of it: this movie is about these kids who find out that there is a ghost in a mirror that traps children so they do shit about it. Please see my update at the bottom of this post.
The long of it? Well...
So this movie starts off with a small family of 3. Actually, the mother died so it's really 2. The young son named Anjas grieves his mother's death but becomes an unwitting victim to an entity that takes form of his mother. Soooo actually it's now a family of 1.
After this intro, we are now centered with this family. A woman has adopted 5 children, all vary in ages from 5 to 12 if I had to guess. All of these kids have a very distinctive personality to them which is totally endearing. So one day she has a family meeting with her kids and tells them she is going to fuck off for the rest of the movie to visit people she is ACTUALLY blood related too. Yo, it's fine, guys! Her adult bio daughter is set to watch over them until then.
So the daughter's boyfriend is shown to be the host of some paranormal show where this episode now focuses on the abandoned house that Anjas has disappeared from. Right when they finish filming he calls the girlfriend who then reminds him if he gotten the new mirror so she can gift it to the aforementioned family. He's like "Uhhhh yeahhhhhh. I diiiiiiid. Bye babe."
After hanging up he looks around and this fuck ass literally takes the mirror from this abandoned house from which in the intro the Kuntilanak has entered to trap Anjas. Like....is this dude for serious?!?
Anyway, we are now shown these adorable little kids named Dinda, Miko, Kresna, Panji and Ambar. They're pretty well behaved kids for the most part albeit curious little fuckers that I'm sure Miko has poisoned their minds with his scary books. Then again, that was how they learned about the myth of the Kuntilanak in the first place so...yeah.
Unbeknownst to these little kiddos, the mirror is already in their own house and almost immediately shit is going bump in the night! They all individually get their own close call experiences with the apparition but like I said, thanks to Miko's book they all have put the clues together and figure out that their house is now plagued with the Kuntilanak.
Now they got to figure out how to save the souls trapped in the mirror!!!
So this movie is described as a horror comedy. Right. In my opinion it's pretty watered down on the comedy side at least. It's not like how you would imagine along the lines of Shaun of the Dead or anything (which was more comedy than horror IMO) which I find the opposite to be true with this movie. There are numerous jump scares in this movie and very little HAHA's in here. All of those which came from children simply acting like children for the sake of comedic relief. Which made sense but the execution? Not so much. I was expecting more from the buildup but sorry to say, it did let me down a little towards the end. Kinda cheesy in some parts.
Especially in the beginning of this movie, every time there was a quirky line from one of the characters there would be this out of place sound effect to signify a funny joke. As if we need a signal to know when we need to laugh. I found that this cheapens the movie. It faded out the more the movie progresses.
If you were to ask me a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have had as much a favored opinion on this movie but now that I've sat on this post for a good while, I decided that I kinda like Kuntilanak actually. I'm still not a fan of the ending. Felt too rushed. HOWEVER I also recently found out that Kuntilanak is actually part of a trilogy! I'm weirdly excited despite from my earlier opinons. So I'm currently in the process of tracking down the 2nd movie. It's difficult to find at the moment but fingers crossed. Trailer looks better than the 1st not gonna lie. Update: I FINALLY found a (legit) way to watch it. Kuntilanak 2 post is live.
So with that being said, what is my verdict here?
If you are interested in watching Kuntilanak then please CLICK HERE to see which streaming services you can watch it on via the free streaming guide app JUSTWATCH!
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