With his friends Sa and Andine, Kafka goes to a haunted factory to
investigate the urban legend of the jamu carrier ghost - only to find out
the ghost is very much real, and in the following days it (or rather she) scares the three of
them and their friends shitless. Kafka investigates further and finds out
that the ghost in fact was once an innocent woman, Sri, who worked as a
Jamu carrier to support her daughter, but then she was raped and killed by
three guys - and now she wants revenge on all the living, and especially
those who have killed her. That said though, the ghost repeatedly gets her
hands on Kafka (both literally and metaphorically) but never kills him - which urges him to return to the haunted factory with Sa and Andine to try
and bring the whole thing to a conclusion - and it turns out the ghost
actually only wanted to show Kafka where she has been buried, and once he
gives her a proper burial, the horror is over ... but is it? Nope,
because Kafka's girlfriend Sa has actually been the ghost's daughter, and
she has gone mad in the course of the proceedings. Regarding
sheer volume, director Koya Pagayo just has to be one of the most
prolific horror directors of Indonesia if not worldwide over the course of
the last two or three years, and as a pure
craftsman, he is not even bad: He knows how to create creepy atmosphere
and how to deliver shocks - sure, he's no inventive director and merely
follows textbook genre routines, but that's already more than one can say about
many a big budget Hollywood director. That said though, Koya Pagayo's
films are almost uniformly dissapointing, because almost all of them seem
to follow the same very simple formula: A little bit of a set-up (of the
supernatural teen slasher variety), then an hour or so of scare scenes
followed by an all too simple solution to the all too feeble plot - and
the problem lies with Koya Pagayo's strengths, actually: Sure, he knows
how to create atmosphere and deliver shocks, but once his films are done
with the set-up, there is little change in mood - which turns all
creepiness into dullness -, and the shock scenes become so repetitive they
bore the hell out of the distinguishing audience after a short while. And
the ending is usually disappointing as well. It would be interesting to
find out what Koya Pagayo would be able to do with a really good script,
but unfortunately, Hantu Jamu Gendong was not based on one of those
but on the typical formula Pagayo is used to direct, and is thus just as
disappointing as his other stuff. That's not to say the film's a total
loss - but it's really not something you have to see.
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