Ivanna

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.

Good bloody slasher. Camerawork on point! There is one scene that makes an impression on the audience's mind, because the angle of shooting is unique, making the fear double even though the ghost doesn't exist yet.

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.

When I sat down here in 2023 to watch the 2022 Indonesian horror movie "Ivanna", I had never heard about the movie. So I only knew that I was in for an Indonesian horror movie experience, which was actually all that I needed to want to watch the movie.

Writer Lele Laila put together a fair enough script and storyline here, based on the novel by Risa Sawaswati. Not that I am in any way familiar with the novel, so I had no idea how true the movie's script is to the source material from the novel. Clearly the writer had no concept of how decay and decomposition works, especially with about 50 years passing and having a body part exposed to such a long time.

While "Ivanna" was a watchable movie, it was by no means a particularly outstanding foray in the Asian horror cinema. And for a lifelong horror afficianado such as myself, then director Kimo Stamboel's 2022 movie was a relatively slow paced trek.

The acting performances in "Ivanna" were good, and they definitely helped to keep the movie afloat. And my limited exposure to Indonesian cinema means that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble. Leading actress Caitlin Halderman, playing Ambar, really carried the movie quite well with her performance.

For a horror movie, then I have to say that I found "Ivanna" to be a bit on the generic side. Sure, the storyline was nice enough for a single viewing. But that is about it, a single viewing is all that the movie has to it.

My rating of "Ivanna" lands on a five out of ten stars.

In the Indonesian movie Ivanna (2022) two young siblings are being rescued after their parents death but soon after they arrive at a new family the older sister Ambar is being haunted by terrifying visions and the whole family is plagued by a malevolent force. The fact that Ambar's eyesight is becoming increasingly worse makes it all even more terrifying for her and brings some dynamic for the plot.

The movie reveals some back plot about the past and et voilà , we have a typical "ghost on a revenge spree that is targeting the innocent" movie. But this movie gets some extra credit for some gruesome gore and some heavy-handed scenes including several decapitations and eyes popping out of the skull. The fact that the ghost or entity is so physically threatening makes up for some truly terrifying scenes that will definitely stay with the viewer for some time.

The overall pace of the movie is rather slow except for the third act where the movie turns up a notch, because of the slow paced beginning and middle part of the movie I think it could have been 10 or 15 minutes shorter, but then again the third act makes up for that. [5,9/10]