• Release year: 2024
• Director: Hanung Bramantyo.
• Producers: Hanung Bramantyo and Azlin Hilda.
• Screenplay by: Haqi Achmad and Hanung Bramantyo.
• Cinematography by: Satria Kurnianto.
• Music by: Fajar Ahadi.

Shotgun Commentary: hilarious combination of a wonderful horror movie and a cheap soap opera.

Review

Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku is a horror story that takes place at an Indonesian plantation where a ghost head keeps appearing to kill the workers. Two months of terrible weather and workers supposedly committing suicide go by. Only then, the owner of the plantation, Rara (Carmela van der Kruk), aka Trinil, comes back home to find the plantation loosing money.

Despite the issues they are facing, none of the workers tell Rara about the suicides, just about the weather problems. It isn’t until the ghost head attacks her that they come clean, hoping that an exorcist helps them.

A mind-blowing combo

This is one of the very few occasions where the same film is fantastic and ridiculous at the same time. The somehow peaceful coexistence of a gruesome, chilling horror film, with a melodramatic, horribly-acted soap opera in simply hypnotising. Truth be told, it is also incredibly confusing, but amusing too, enough to keep you watching anyway.

The beginning follows the native legend horror narrative to a T. A random group of people tell talk about the legend, and one of them is unfortunate enough to face it. This structure is very formulaic in the realm of horror, since it gives you all the context you need without taking up much time.

As the film moves on, the clunky special effects are very easily overlooked by the top-notch jump scares and the beautiful simplicity of the staging that gives way to the scary bits. Their clearly limited budget more than makes up for with imagination and a spot of cheek.

Sadly, this is as far as the good times go. For some inexplicable reason, at some point, they decide to become a soap opera to explain the background and motivations of the head. Diffused, extra-warm images that look like a 2000s melodrama take over without any previous head up, leaving you befuddled and defenseless against such drastic change.

Bad to worse

From then on, the feature switches genre like presenters do at the Oscars, seamlessly, but unnecessarily. On top of this, the acting, which was pretty decent until that point, suddenly plummets. Reaching its lowest with the worst “drunk” performance in the history of horror. Not to mention that the characters start behaving erratically for no reason. They randomly kill without motive or run away from something that literally can’t hurt them.

Amongst this chaos, it is not lost on this author that, once again, only women get possessed. The exorcist character is introduced to us through his saving of a woman that is clearly possessed if one goes by the very Constantine-like (2005) makeup and special effects. However, despite the main target being Rara, it is her husband that sees the ghost while she gets possessed, remaining none the wiser to the issue until well into the film.

It is not only nonsensical for the spirit to possess Rara, but also probably harder since she is really tough, specially compared to her pusillanimous husband. Once more, sexist stereotypes prevail over simple logic, but at this point, that is hardly surprising.

Redeeming quality

Still, the movie does offer a curious novelty, they use the Muslim faith to fight evil. It is very shocking, at least from a Westerner’s point of view, to not hear Jesus or any of the Christian bunch mentioned during a possession film. A detail that brings freshness to the subgenre and makes it a tad more interesting to watch after so many products following the same criteria.

All in all, Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku definitely has its ups and downs. If anything, it is an original watch. It will very likely please horror fans who like low-budget horror, as it shows a great deal of imagination. But most of all, watching the symbiosis of two genres so far apart from each other makes it worth a look just for the uniqueness of it.

Advice to take from this movie:

• If a ghost needs you alive to do something, why bother running away from it?
• Killing someone who is literally going to do what you are about to do seems a bit counterproductive, no?
• Don’t mess with black magic, you’ve got an infinity of other things you can mess with, just not black magic.

What’s your take? Have you watched Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku? Which genre did you like better? Were you convinced by the mix?

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