Ivanna

Kimo Stamboel did his best to deliver a decent horror story with Ivanna. Sadly, the bland, repetitive, and lack of urgency script withhold all of his potentials. In the end, it's an overlong, monotonous, and dull film.

The plot works as it is. It's simple but the movie executions made up for its plot. It does waste some time to explore the "mystery" (Though from my personal experience, it's pretty predictable).

Now, the eerie/creepy moment at the start of the movie is the best part of the movie for me. Watching a headless body walks in the background with unaware characters really sells it. The atmosphere support these scenes.

The problem came with the slasher part of the movie. Without spoiling much, the movie only uses one kind of execution. Usually, one of the fun part of a slasher movie is watching how the killer creatively execute his/her victim. In Ivanna there is only one method, and it start gets boring aftering watching it done for the third time.

Overall, it's entertaining enough for me, for an Indonesian horror movie, it does a decent job.

The plot is familiar, and if you've seen more than a handful of horror movies in your life, you'll pretty much know the score here. It is competently produced, shot, and acted for the most part, so it's decent to watch, just not much more than a genre recitation. There are a few, not entirely original, but at least moderately fresh elements, though not many. It actually had some reasonable scares too. If you're not Indonesian, it's at least interesting from the point of view of seeing a slice of Indonesia and an odd little window into how Indonesians look at their colonial past, or at least how this particular filmmaker sees it. It's a lot more pro-Dutch than I would have expected.

The storyline is pretty simple and predictable. Many directors from HK or Hollywood have directed something similar over the last 20 to 30 years.

The movie relies very much on jump-scares, yet they are mainly low-quality jump-scares, e.g. Loud noises and sudden-shock. None of the thrilling experiences is memorable.

Also, with the same repetitive style of thrills - pulling one's head off + appearing here and there - it gets bored after a while. I would expect the horror experience to escalate as time goes by, but it's pretty dull and flat throughout the movie.

If this movie were released in the 1990's or 2000's, it might be great. BUT having shown it in the year 2022, I would say.. it's rather old-fashioned, dull, monotonous, and NO big deal!

I gave 2.0/ 5.0. It's just too ordinary, and pretty forgettable!

Kimo Stamboel's direction brings a touch of gravitas, but no amount of blood and severed heads could save 'Ivanna' from its tacky writing. Another awful entry in an all-around awful series.