Kutukan Suster Ngesot

Horror movies from Indonesia and/or The Philippines are always a bit peculiar and obscure, but nevertheless worth checking out for true fans of the genre. Especially since I had the pleasure of catching the blood- soaked "Macabre" (a.k.a. "Darah") at a festival earlier this year, I'm trying to keep an eye on the Indonesian horror offer. This is also how I stumbled upon "The Curse of the Leg Dragging Nurse"; an out-of-the- ordinary but interesting little sleeper. An all-girl high school basketball team and their hunky (but extremely shy) assistant coach are heading for a tournament in Jakarta. Their bus crashes near a spooky old graveyard and part of the group embark on a search for help through the dark impenetrable woods. They end up in a long-abandoned hospital from the Dutch colonization era and, obviously, strange occurrences begin to take place. Only the deeply religious inhabitants from a nearby village know that the hospital is doomed with the curse of the leg-dragging nurse. Once there was a doctor who used his patients as guinea pigs for a revolutionary medicine, but their families eventually formed an angry mob to lynch him. When they wanted to kill him, however, he cowardly blamed his faithful nurse for all the damage. She now emerged from the dead, albeit with a little leg injury, to haunt the stranded teenagers. "The Curse of the Leg Dragging Nurse" is fairly sinister, with a constantly foreboding atmosphere and a good use of locations and set pieces. The characters are overall likable even though there are quite a lot of stereotypes amongst them, like the obnoxious girl, the charming love interest and the funny guys. Superficially it looks like a standard Asian splatter flick, but it's a bit more profound and ambitious than that. The folklore myth is original and writer/director David Purnomo prefers suspense over blood and guts. The film is a little slow at times (especially during the middle section) and the climax is disappointing. In her ghostly shape, the titular nurse somewhat resembles an adult version of the "Ringu" girl, except that she can't walk properly and drags herself forward over the floor.