Brief Story Line
Stella (Estelle Linden - Sabar Ini Ujian, Valentine etc) who was engaged to Theo (Pradikta Wicaksono - Love or Fate etc) went to have her bachelorette party outside the city. She went to a secluded villa together with her best friends Cheryl (Gesya Shandy - Tersanjung the Series web series etc) and Kimi (Shindy Huang - Pretty Little Liars web series etc) during the weekend, while Theo stayed at home to work on an assignment from his boss.
What was supposed to be a fun party soon became scary and dangerous for the women when an unknown murderer starting to attack them one by one. Theo who was on video call with Stella tried his best to save them all by doing everything he could.
So what would happen to them all? You can find out in this pretty suspenseful thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As I said above, this movie had a very interesting premise where one of the lead cast was trying to save his fiancé and her best friends through the online media. Majority of the suspenseful moments in the movie was shown through the eyes of the cast via the camera on laptop or handphone. This might not be an original kind of shooting in Hollywood movies, but I have never seen it done in Indonesian movies yet. Which is why it was quite exciting for me.
When the characters were first introduced, I noticed that the picture seemed very clear with bright color which somehow made me feel like I was watching a commercial/TV movie. After some scenes showing how close the three best friends were, and the movie started to use the online camera, it no longer gave such feeling. In fact with the quite well done background music, I actually felt pretty intense. And showing the same person on multiple angles simultaneously, plus having poor connections at times made the whole experience even more realistic. Only thing that I thought could be better was the way a person was holding handphone while taking video of themselves, as sometimes the hand did not seem to be at the right position. Plus there were moments where I thought the screen was too small to see in details. However, these were pretty minor things that other people might not notice.
Unfortunately though, after a while of having similar scenes of the cast trying to escape the masked murderer, the film became a bit repetitive. So it was refreshingly surprising when they showed something different at latter stage but still having strong amateur video feel. The movie has short duration of 82 minutes which was just nice as taking too long would not have added value. Even that very final scene was not really useful to me personally aside from giving extra surprise. Oh btw, the film tried to give some twists which I thought was easily spot mid way through the film as the hints were quite apparent.
Irrespective of the few shortcomings, I must applaud the efforts from the movie makers in trying to make a unique thriller instead of the very standard supernatural horror. This film was directed by Dyan Sunu Prastowo who has directed few drama movies like Rain Behind the Window, Tentang Rindu and few others. I did not see information if this movie was based on any books or any other media, so got to hand it to the writer for the creativity. It was written by Eimiria Tamsyarina who had collaborated with Dyan in other films like Pesan di Balik Awan and Aku Lupa Aku Luka.
The main cast were quite OK with the young women's friendship looked genuine and their chemistry looked natural, though I cannot say the same for the male lead who was not really convincing to me in showing his expressions. Overall this is an interesting enough thriller movie with unique concept and having sufficient amount of thrill and intense moments. So if you are looking for this kind of Indonesian film, then you can certainly give it a try on Disney+ which has given us the opportunity to watch this via streaming (especially since it did not have long theatrical run).
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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