Several weeks ago I saw 2 excellent Indonesian films directed and written by Joko Anwar called Impetigore and Satan's Slaves. I very much like the horror genre and I had a great time watching those 2 films, both of them are full of suspense and a decent story with a proper amount of scary scenes. Since watching those 2 films I have been eyeing another Indonesian movie where Anwar worked only as a writer.
This film is called The Queen of Black Magic and the name itself informs the viewer about the dark nature of its story. One of the main differences between the director of this movie, Kimo Stamboel, and Joko Anwar, is the constant use of gore. This can be seen even by just checking the poster at the beginning of this article. Anwar is much more subtle and elegant in his presentation of horror and he doesn't use gore as a tool to impress the viewer. Personally, I prefer horror without gore, however, in this story the gore has a good reason to be present.
The events of this film take place in a very remote building that serves as an orphanage. The man in charge of it is dying and he is visited by several men who lived there when they were younger, one of them, even brings his family so they can know where his dad came from. These men are very thankful for the help they received in their youth from the man in charge of the orphanage, but soon enough we will learn a very sinister truth about the past of this place.
Things are weird since the beginning, when they arrive at the orphanage the 2 adults that are currently in charge of it have a very off-putting behavior. They act in an extremely cordial way when it is clear they should be acting in a more familiar and comfortable manner. This is made clear by one dialogue line between one of the visiting men and the one in charge of the building.
As the movie advances, we begin to learn bits of information about a weird woman who used to live in this place. There is a mysterious room in the building that no one dares going in, and strange old videotapes are shown where this woman can be seen displaying very bizarre behavior.
Things can advance very quickly in this movie, I mean, in one moment there is a normal scene inside the building, and a few seconds later we can see centipedes going inside people's bodies, including eyes and mouths. The gore is very hellish and hard to look at and with good reason.
This film has one great twist, maybe even better than the one in Impetigore. It completely changes what we have thought about the orphanage and the way everything was told up to that point. The evil is, as it is usually the case in horror films, the result of extremely bad experiences that affected innocent people.
I didn't like how the evil is defeated in this movie, especially because there was a person helping this evil and this person should have been able to prevent the deadly attack. In the movie, this deadly attack is shown as a surprise, but taking into consideration the locations of everyone in the room, including the key person who is helping the evil, this attack shouldn't have been possible in any way. This was a minor disappointment in what was otherwise a very satisfactory horror film.
If you like the horror genre, you should definitely check this film out but also the other 2 films from Joko Anwar I mention at the beginning. These are all very fine horror movies and I think they deserve more popularity than what they have gained so far. I also recommend keeping an eye on Anwar's next works because this guy clearly has good taste when creating horror stories.
The best
- Excellent twist that I didn't see coming.
- It has very suspenseful and scary scenes.
- I liked the mystery surrounding the witch or as the title says, the queen of black magic.
The worst
- I am not a fan of gore and this film has a lot of it. However, I understand why the creators decide to add gore and it makes sense.
- The way the evil is defeated was disappointing.
More information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10656188/ Review: AAA In numbers: 7.5/10