Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kimo Stamboel
Starring: Aulia Sarah, Maudy Effrosina, Jourdy Pranata, Moh. Iqbal Sulaiman, Ardit
Erwandha, Claresta Taufan, Diding Boneng
Perhaps the most interesting element of
Luca Guadagnino's divisive remake of Dario Argento's
Suspiria
is how he made ballet more integral to the plot, closing the film out with
a climactic dance number that pitted good against evil in a mass of
writhing bodies. Kimo Stamboel does something similar with
Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, which takes the old musical trope of putting on a show to save a
community theatre from a ruthless property developer and gives it a horror
twist. Here a dance must be performed to save a rural village from the
ghostly entity that has terrorised it for centuries.
Stamboel's film is a prequel to 2022's KKN di Desa Penari, which became Indonesia's biggest ever box-office hit on its release.
Much like Janicza Bravo's
Zola, that film begin life as a viral twitter thread penned by a user named
SimpleMan, who later reworked the thread into a bestselling
novel. KKN di Desa Penari tells the story of a group of
students who travel to a remote village to perform community service
duties. There they find the villagers living in fear of Badarawuhi
(Aulia Sarah), an evil spirit in the form of a seductive woman who
requires a series of victims to be selected to cross over to her realm and
spend eternity performing a dance.
The Curse Begins opens with a prologue in 1955, where we
see the villagers appeasing Badarawuhi with a ritual dance while a young
woman is smuggled out of the village in possession of a bracelet of some
significance. Cut to 1980 where Mila (Maudy Effrosina) calls a
shaman when her mother, Inggri (Maryam Supraba), succumbs to a
mysterious affliction that gives her the appearance of a victim of
possession. Discovering that Inggri now has the aforementioned bracelet,
the shaman demands that Mila return it to its original village in order to
lift the curse. Joined by her cousin Yuda (Jourdy Pranata) and
friends Jito (Moh. Iqbal Sulaiman) and Arya (Ardit Erwandha), Mila heads to the village in question, hoping to set things
right.
The Curse Begins treads a narrative path similar to another
recent Indonesian horror hit, Joko Anwar's
Impetigore, in which a young woman returns to her remote childhood village and
finds she has been selected for some nefarious purpose. As Mila snoops
around it becomes clear she has been drawn to the village to meet her
destiny, and the plot revolves around her figuring out how to
cheat Badarawuhi. A common theme in recent Indonesian horror movies
has seen young people battling traditional values, which the protagonists
need to shake off to move on with their lives, which likely explains their
appeal to the young cinemagoers of that traditionally conservative nation.
With their long-hair and flared trousers, Mila and her friends represent
Indonesia's late-blooming flower power generation, the first generation of
young people to question their place in society. In this context the idea
of two realms, the real world and that controlled by Badarawuhi,
might then be seen to represent the clash between progressive-minded young
Indonesians and the rigidly traditional society they wish to break free
from. Might there also be a feminist element in Mila's desire to escape
her prescribed destiny of eternal servitude?
Such subtext, if present, will no doubt play better to an Indonesian
audience than western viewers who are simply looking for a thrilling piece
of folk-horror. The movie's sluggish pacing will likely prove a stumbling
block for the latter, with too much of the two-hour running time spent
doling out exposition that makes a rather simple mythology seem a lot more
complicated than it really is. While Mila may be inching towards her
destruction, there's a distinct lack of immediate threat to any of the
protagonists. You might think her cousin and friends are there to provide
secondary victims for Badarawuhi, but the entity is solely interested
in Mila, which results in a negligible body count.
Amid the tiresome world-building we do get some effective sequences. A
set-piece that sees Badarawuhi materialise in a bathing pool to menace
Mila is equal parts sinister and sexy, boasting FX work that betters most
of what's offered by Hollywood horror movies. The climactic dance sees
Stamboel arrange writhing ghostly figures with the precision of a Busby
Berkeley number. But there simply isn't enough to keep horror fans
engaged, and with its preference for lore over gore,
The Curse Begins is a bit of a bore.
Dancing Village: The Curse Begins is on Shudder from August 16th.
