Ritual

I was going to watch another movie, but due to the similarity of the name, I watched this movie by mistake. Glad I watched this movie.

I think it was a movie full of horror, suspense and mystery. It felt many emotions at once. Moreover, some psychological messages were given at the end of the movie.

I was trying to predict the next scene, but each time what happened in the movie surprised me.

I don't understand why the IMDb score is so low. Of course, there was a lot of confusing stuff, but at the end of the movie, everything was clear.

I like to see mystery - horror - thriller subjects in one movie. Watching this movie was definitely not a waste of time for me.

A man wakes up in a shallow grave in a forest with no memories. He soon discovers scenes of horror and tries to discover what happened.

This Indonesian thriller has clearly been pitched at an international market seeing as it's an English language film. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when lines of dialogue are spoken they are a bit clunky. However, there really is hardly any dialogue at all. The story is told virtually all via images. We work out details gradually and slowly put things together. To be honest, for the first hour I wasn't too impressed. There were occasionally effective moments such as when the protagonist hides in a shack to evade a mysterious opponent. But for the most part this opening two-thirds goes by a little too slowly and some character actions seem entirely bizarre. However, it has to be said that the final third is really rather good. It actually puts some of the frustrating moments from earlier into some kind of context and it ensures that the film ends in a satisfying way. This is for me an example of a film that is definitely saved, or even defined, by its clever denouement. For this reason it is worth sticking with for sure.

Well, i've gotta say that i was interested to watch it because of its catchy title and the idea about an English spoken film made by Indonesians (i reckon it's the 1st Indonesian film which used English as the main language in it).

The 1st 50 minutes, the film seems to be so dull with the shallow explanations, barely interactions from one character to another (unlike other previous Anwar's films), how kid characters ruin it with the way they converse in the forest poorly shows lack of thrilled & anxious expression, seemingly to be a shallow no-background story plot, and unsynchronized & unexplained details(necessarily prepared for the ending). All can lead the audience to a boredom and sleepiness.

Endure it, then the film will show you the worth of Joko Anwar as a writer-director and Rio Dewanto as an actor.

Anwar prepared an unexpected suspense plot mixed with some thrilling horror ingredients blending them all in the perfectly fit location, and served it to the audience with some quite decent cinematography. Dewanto as the leading actor made convincing enough expression and acting (great pukes as well) so that his performance made "John Evans" becoming a more interesting character.

After watching it, some questions may show up in mind regarding the background story that causes things that happen in "Modus Anomali" and how the story goes after the film ends. Generally it's a recommended nice flick to spend the evening with.

8/10.

At first, after seeing the trailer, I was like a little bit not surprised about the genre, thriller, or let's say noir movie. As we know that Anwar's two recent movies took the same genre (Dead Time : Kala (2007) and The Forbidden Door (2009)). But as always, Anwar succeed to made me interested.

Well, this is sort of movie which thriller fans will enjoy and I am on of the fan. It was a great experience watching this movie. You'll get a very tensed atmosphere which supported by astounding shooting angle. It is also supported by the score which wasn't excessive, like another typical thriller movie, and still precise.

The actors was quite awesome particularly Rio Dewanto as the leading role. His expression was quite convincing.

The negatives about this movie is a little bit seam computer graphic at one scene. Yeah, just one scene. Also, considering that the actors are all Indonesians and this movie uses English as the language, stiff conversations frequently emerged though their pronunciations was very good.

All could I say, I am proud as Indonesians! Joko Anwar has made such a good movie in the middle of those crappy-cheesy-cheap horror movies invasion in Indonesia. I'm moved how a few Indonesian film-makers still try to raise the Indonesia film towards a better future.

I'm not sure why this film is receiving low scores as I really enjoyed it. Basically, a guy wakes up in a shallow grave in the woods with amnesia and has to work out what's going on. He finds a cabin and the mystery begins to unfold. Or does it. It's not until the final scene where the plot takes a huge leap and, in my opinion, it's worth watching it just for that.

There are hints of Korean film-making in it, like Old Boy. It's atmospheric and tense throughout and it's quite an original film. I think what makes the film a cut above the rest is the sound. You really need to watch the film in surround sound as the sound is one of the strong points that adds to the tension. The mystery kept me guessing until right at the end. It's a very dark film on retrospect and I'd recommend you go into it without any expectations. Just enjoy the ride and wait for the awesome final scene. As I said, it's very original. I hope we see more films from Joko Anwar as he's certainly got talent and the potential to bring Indonesian film into the limelight.