Do You See What I See

Do You See What I See (a phrase I literally only associate with the Christmas carol, so I can't help but hum it even whilst typing this) is a fun little Indonesian ghost flick that is overall pretty effective and entertaining.

It follows Mawar (Diandra Agatha), a university student who inadvertently finds herself in a relationship with a ghost, as her hapless friends try and save her soul. It's a fun concept and is clearly rooted in Indonesian folklore and mythology, making it an even richer experience on that front.

The performances are honestly pretty great across the board; you really sense the deep friendship the main girls have with one another and I think Agatha in particular shows a lot of range, although I do wish her performance was a little more varied and intense at times.

I also have to commend the cinematography, that often mixes first-person "found footage" style with conventional horror techniques, with some Raimiesque trickery. It keeps what is an otherwise stripped down story (mostly set in two locations) relatively fresh and interesting.

However, I do think the pacing is pretty bad; not only does the movie take a bit too long to get going, but it does feel somewhat repetitive in the middle. Lots of cheap jump scares and a prevailing sense that we're biding time until the climax comes. For a movie with so much opportunity for character development, it's a shame there isn't more of it.

I know it's based on a 30 minute-ish podcast episode, but like...isn't the point of a film adaptation to bring in things that the original form couldn't really explore?

I also wish the movie went more into the lore and explained some of the plot elements better; perhaps the film is directed at an Indonesian audience, so it's possible that there's cultural context I'm missing, but there are just things that happen in the film I found myself a bit puzzled by.

However, I think the movie really picks up towards the end, with a pretty fun and tense sequence that leads to a truly devastating and frankly, story redeeming ending that really stuck with me. It's the sort of ending that reminds you why it's ESSENTIAL to get out of the American bubble re movie consumption, especially with horror.

Do You See What I See is like watching a professional figure skater start off strong, start to wobble through her set, and then totally stick the landing.

The story about a woman who is dating a ghost is interesting, whether using the perspective of the woman, or her friends. The movie uses her friends perspective, so we can see some interesting things like when her friends suspecting whether her boyfriend is a good man or not, or whether her boyfriend is human or not. And of course when her friends are haunted by the ghost. It's an interesting story and surprisingly well executed. However, I think this film needs to deepen the story, especially in the cause of the core incident to add more scary element to the film. Also, the main character's acting still feels a bit stiff. Lastly, I am very satisfied with the ending chosen.

The fact that "Do You See What I See" was an Asian horror movie that I had neither seen nor heard about, was actually more than sufficient to make me opt to watch it. I do have a thing for Asian cinema and horror cinema, so this was a given.

Writers Lele Laila and Mizter Popo put together a fair enough script. It was, however, somewhat on the generic and bland side. I sort of semi-zoned out about halfway through the movie, because there wasn't a whole lot scary stuff going on, and the pacing of the narrative was rather sluggish. "Do You See What I See" feels like it is a background noise type of movie, provided you can understand spoken Indonesian, of course.

I was not familiar with the cast in the movie, but the acting performances were certainly fair enough.

Visually, then director Awi Suryadi certain managed to make an atmospheric movie by using lighting, or lack thereof mostly to be honest, locations and such. It was not a movie that really incorporated a lot of special effects, though. I really do like the corpse effects, though.

Watchable, sure, but "Do You See What I See" was hardly a memorable foray into the Indonesian horror cinema. There are far better and way more scary Indonesian horror movies out there.

My rating of "Do You See What I See" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Adapting a short 30 minute-ish audio only podcast into an over 90 minute full feature film is not an easy feat for sure. However I was pleasantly surprised by how good this movie really was initially. It started out strong and I really like how they were able to still make the movie so creepy & tense despite we who have already listened to the podcast kinda got the gist of what will happen next already. Unfortunately the way they dragged the movie in the latter act kinda bogged down the whole movie altogether. But this was in no way a deal breaker as overall the movie was still really worth a watch, even just to witness Diandra Agatha's shift from the innocent naive Mawar to a much more sinister version of herself.

Recently I started watching indonesian horror movies and they are really good!! This is movie is based on a podcast and it is really hard to make a movie based on a podcast so a big salute for that! And talking about overall movie technically than the I loved the lighting and cinematography of the movie the way they have shot the movie in low lighting and giving the realistic experience to the audience. The camera angles was best I really enjoyed watching the movie. Sound plays a important role in horror movie and the makers of this film has done a great job in the sound part too... Really nice work!!