Darah – Made In Indonesia

Last Monday was significant in a few ways.  I have decided to be a vegetarian if the circumstances allow.  Something like a social meat eater.  Let’s see how long it will last.  F1 has one more race to go but the driver and constructor’s champion titles have already been concluded.  Cynthia was out-of-town and with my new found freedom, I picked a horror movie to watch.

Strictly speaking, this Indonesian production “Darah” (means blood in Malay) is not a horror film.  More like a thriller with lots and lots of blood.  I can imagine my buddy Mark would faint halfway through the show.  While some friends of mine have rightfully pointed out that there are better horror films than this (and many others would not want to watch this genre), my motivation of watching “Darah” was as follows:

1. I love watching a horror film in a theater.  I am often entertained by the atmosphere of pockets of audience screaming-out-loud.
2. I always enjoy watching an Indonesian production that makes it to the International market.  I have studied the language before and it is fun trying to understand the dialogs natively.

First half an hour of “Darah” is devoted to the character development of six friends – guys and girls and I was thinking: where is the blood?  Second half an hour sees the introduction of the scary family of Dara the mother, Adam and Maya – her scary son and her hot daughter in red, and a rather fat butcher who reminds me of a pedophile or a pervert.  OK, I began to see blood.  The last half an hour is filled with accentuated chopping and dismemberment, blood, more blood, and extremely more blood in a chaotic mindless way.  Oh my.  There was only one color I saw: red.

While one may argue that “Darah” lacks the storyline quality, I do find a story built with a hint of folklore better than just another ghost story in a refreshing way.  At the beginning of the movie, there is an argument of a sister blaming her brother over the death of their parents.  Something to do with an unfortunate decision that the brother has made.  That ties in nicely to the ending of the show, in my opinion, when the sister has realized what a terrible mistake she has made.  Also, there was an opening scene of pieces of steak cooked over charcoal fire somewhere in the city of Bandung.  That metaphor has morphed into something pretty gruesome as the story unfolds.  And what I really appreciate is how artistic this film is created.  I am intrigued by the quality of work too.

My only complain is the censorship.  Even with a M18 rating, there are quite a few scenes being cut and without those, some parts of the movie seem a bit flat.  What a pity.  Having said that, there are still a lot of blood and gore scenes that may make your stomach churns.  Those scenes didn’t seem to affect me though.  I had minestrone soup and vegetarian pasta in tomato sauce for dinner.

Horror movies, I want more!