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A bunch of college students want to make a documentary about the
headless pocong (= shroud ghost) of Blora Street - and are freaked out of
their minds when they actually get a glimpse of the ghost. After that, one
of the students, Mey, goes missing, and when Sandra comes to her apartment looking for her two weeks later, it is already inhabited by
another girl, Linda. Soon pretty much everybody is haunted by either the
shroud ghost or Linda's ghost or both. Sandra and Linda get together to
investigate, and soon find out about the headless shroudghost, but it also
soon becomes apparent that Mey's own boyfriend Fred has killed her in a
fit of jealousy and hid her body in the refrigerator still in the
appartment that Linda just couldn't open. Eventually, Linda and Sandra catch
Fred trying to remove the body, and as a result of this, he tries to kill
them as well, but is himself killed thanks to Mey's ghost. Eventually, the
missing head of the headless shroudghost is founbd, too, and once it's
properly buried, everything should be back to normal ... but is it? I've
probably said all of this before, but I just have to say it again: Of
late, Koya Pagayo has been one of the most prolific directors not only in
Indonesian but in international horror cinema. And despite all of his
detractors, he's a very talented craftsman, he knows how to build up an
atmosphere and handle shock and suspense without relying on special
effects too much, and he does make his low budgets work. Sure, his scare
tactics are very traditional and he is more craftsman than visionary, but
I guess you could say that about 95 percent of all the Oscar winners as
well (sometimes not even). Problem with pretty much all of Pagayo's
films is though - their screenplays suck. And Pocong Jalan Blora
follows the familiar narrative route of pretty much all of Pagayo's films
to the t: A feeble set-up that puts some teens in a creepy situation, then
an hour of scenes of these teens being scared shitless that become
repetitive before too long, offer only little variations on the same
theme, and seem interchangeable among one another concerning their
narrative order. In the last few mintues then, a solution to the whole
story is pretty much pulled out of the hat that lacks originality (usually
it's just one or more corpses that are found and need burying). It would
be really interesting to see Koya Pagayo handle a decent script, as I'm
sure that would be a hell of a good shocker, but as long as he only makes
films like this one, his work is little more than a footnote in the annals
of horror movies.
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find Pocong Jalan Blora at adultvideouniverse.com
