9/28/2023 0 Comments Arq movie review![]() With a title like “Impetigore,” some viewers may be expecting or fearing that the film may be a wall-to-wall bloodbath, but that's not quite the case here. While he sets the stage for the more overt horrors Maya and Dini will soon face, Anwar generates additional tension by setting up a clash between the modern ideas in Maya and Dini's big city attitudes and the town's more superstitious and old-fashioned traditions of the past, ranging from a general mistrust and fear of women to a wholehearted embrace of things like curses, and the gruesome lengths that some need to go through in order to break them. Following the electrifying opening sequence, he shifts gears to slow-burn mode, proving he is just as capable at ratcheting up the suspense via a more deliberate and measured approach-there's a beautifully done extended sequence in which Maya and Dini are riding a bus at night to get to the village that develops a quietly mounting sense of dread and paranoia that's straight out of the Val Lewton playbook. The basic plot elements of “Impetigore” are perhaps not blazingly unique, I suppose, but what Anwar lacks in terms of originality, he more than makes up for with sheer style. The rest I shall leave for you to discover but suffice it to say, things do not go especially smoothly for the two. After learning that the local bigwig, Ki Saptadi ( Ario Bayu), is a practitioner of the ancient art of shadow puppetry, Maya and Dini decide to pose as students conducting research in order to find out about the house and the weirdness that seems to be affecting the town. In dire need of money, she and Dini head off to the village to check things out and while they find the house easily enough, they also discover some other unsettling things-the fact that there don’t seem to be any children around aside from the three girls that Maya occasionally spots, and that the graveyard contains far more graves than one might expect from a place that size. Maya makes a discovery that leads her to believe that her late parents were actually rich, and that the enormous house they owned in a remote Javanese town where she was born may now belong to her. Maya survives the attack but is clearly unnerved about what her attacker seemed to know about her, and begins to look through the possessions of the late aunt who raised her for as far back as she can remember. ![]() When a truck pulls up, the car drives off but the driver soon returns and demonstrates that he knows a lot about Maya, delivering the ominous message “We don’t want what your family left behind” before attacking her. The boredom quickly disappears with the arrival of a sedan that Maya is convinced has been following her around for the last few days. ![]() In it, Maya ( Tara Basro) is working her dead-end job as a toll booth collector in a remote part of the city, chatting with best friend Dini ( Marissa Anita) over their cell phones to alleviate the boredom. Whatever you do, make sure you are watching the film right from the beginning because it kicks off with an absolutely spellbinding opening sequence.
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