mademoisherl

In a world brought by the suffragettes and their reincarnations to make feminism even bigger every day, it's still such a bitter pill to acknowledge that sometimes the one who brings girls down is none other than a girl herself. Molly Manning Walker has a whole cupboard of this kind of pill tho! Isn't it sickening to watch how boys will pull out an excuse to dismiss their "homie" nightmare of behavior in the name of friendship? How easy it is to blindside someone with an unassuming front? The extent of how shameful teenagers feel when they're put to the test of peer pressure? The alarming state of little knowledge on consent especially for minors? Girls' inability to communicate how they feel about a situation out of fear of judgment, prejudice, and more horrifyingly, even worse things to happen to them?

This film might not be in a spectrum of grande cinematic experience but its reflection on the horror of living as a girl unfortunately has been relevant for so many decades now. Here's hoping that sooner in the future, people would look back to this film and find it as a dystopian past they don't wanna revisit, ever.

For the duration's worth and the marketing materials, I was expecting Joko Anwar to expand the discussion triggers on various perceptions of what would happen the moment someone was buried six feet under. Unfortunately, he spent too much time on the jumpscare build-up in the second act to fully develop his promising main characters, which made the story... kinda go nowhere.

The first act is solid, Widuri Puteri and Faradina Mufti did an immense job of making the seamless transition from young Sita to adult Sita. Her and Adil's childhood struggle is a stellar backstory, which is a shame that the follow-up in the second act felt cheap to handle their inner conflictions. Would love to see more screen time of young Sita and Adil in the pesantren because it would've given more betrayal value to add to drive Sita's motivation and also satisfactory value for what eventually happened to the villain. Personally, I wasn't invested enough in the villain to see his ass totally whipped as a payoff. The horror elements in the second act are what tickled me the most because for being something that supposedly affected Sita's state of mind, all of the events were actually meaningless and contradictory. Why bother making bad things happen to the people who don't deserve it when the point is that you'll reap what you sow before entering the afterlife?

Another thing is Adil's character journey. I feel like he had so much potential, especially with the exceptional delivery by the incomparable Reza Rahadian, that went wasted because the film didn't want to address him explicitly. For being half of the main characters, I wish we got more of his story shown.

All in all, the cast ensemble carried this film on their backs. No bad performances whatsoever. The sound design also popped off. If only the story is much stronger.

Most media representations of SA survivors always put the spotlight on how the heinous things could even happen in the very first place; the perpetrators' motives, what the victims were doing in their lives (or even weirdly enough, wear) before the incident, and how heartbreaking it is for the family.

Ravi L. Bharwani and Rayya Makarim said otherwise.

This film takes us to look at the aftermath, how much an SA survivor had to endure an upside-down world, and how alienating the experience could be for the people around them. My heart continuously breaks as the film progresses and I don't think I can even bring myself to rewatch this film, but Raihaanun and Lukman Sardi delivered an immense performance for their respective roles.