Grave Torture (Indonesia, 2024)

I’ve reviewed a couple of Joko Anwar’s films in previous years — The Queen of Black Magic and Satan’s Slaves. Both impressed me enough to keep an eye out for his films. They don’t always work for me, but I never find them less than interesting. So his new film, Grave Torture, was an easy pick this year.

Grave Torture is currently streaming on Netflix in the UK.

Synopsis

As teenagers, Sita and her brother Adil work in their parents’ bakery until they are orphaned by a suicide bomber. The bomber had come into the bakery shortly beforehand, leaving Adil with a cassette tape purportedly containing a recording of a dead sinner undergoing “grave torture”. This is a form of judgement, in Islam, where an angel appears to the recently dead in their graves to test their faith, physically torturing the bodies of those who fall short even before they pass over to the afterlife.

The siblings are sent to a strict Islamic school, where Sita has the concept of grave torture drummed into her by one of the teachers. When she learns that Adil is being sexually abused by the school’s main sponsor, Sita helps him escape. This takes them through a creepy old tunnel where they meet the ghost of one of the sponsor’s other victims, who begs for their help.

Now, as adults, Sita works as a nurse in a care home and Adil prepares corpses for burial. Neither has forgotten their obsession with grave torture, however, and they get a chance to investigate it directly following the death of a patient with an evil past. This plunges the siblings into a terrifying new world of supernatural horrors.

General Thoughts

Normally, I love watching horror films from around the world that present familiar tropes in ways that are fresh to me. Grave Torture largely worked in this way for me, riffing on a number of horror films I’ve seen before, but it assumed a familiarity with Islamic teachings that was beyond me. This made parts of the film tricky to follow until I paused and looked up the Punishment of the Grave on Wikipedia.

Even after doing so, I struggled to follow the point of the film. The first act seems to be a firm condemnation of religious fundamentalism, from the religiously motivated suicide bomber to the smug cruelty of the pious teachers. By the end, however, I wondered if I was watching the Islamic equivalent of a Jack Chick tract. There is clearly cultural nuance here that I have missed, and this bothers me.

Verdict

I really don’t know what to make of Grave Torture. It has a great first act and a climax that weaves together some terrific scenes of horror. At the same time, I found myself disengaging as the film went on, partly for the reasons I mentioned above.

The other aspect I struggled with, however, was the way the third act was building to an obvious revelation. This is a technique that can work, as Lovecraft demonstrated in any number of stories, but only really when used to build dread of something inevitable. Here, it feels more like a twist we can see coming because it’s been used too many times before.

Even so, Grave Torture absolutely worked for me as a spectacle. The best scenes are creepy, violent, and imaginatively gory. I found myself having to look away from the screen more than once. The monster design is a particular highlight, although it is somewhat let down by some rough CGI in the climax.

While Grave Torture is Joko Anwar’s most polished and mature film so far, I also found it his least satisfying. Still, this makes me hope that his next release will bring this skill to something more accessible.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (USA, 2021)
Tales That Witness Madness (UK, 1973)
When Evil Lurks (Argentina, 2023)
Under Paris (France, 2024)
In a Violent Nature (Canada, 2024)
Torso (Italy, 1973)
Titane (France, 2021)
Rorschach (USA, 2015)
The Coffee Table (Spain, 2024)
Dr Caligari (USA, 1989)
Bit (USA, 2020)
The Guard From Underground (Japan, 1992)
Oddity (Ireland, 2024)
Speak No Evil (Denmark/Netherlands, 2022)
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (USA, 1982)
Grave Torture (Indonesia, 2024)
Bedlam (USA, 1946)
The Innsmouth School For Girls (USA, 2023)
Daddy’s Head (UK, 2024)
All You Need Is Death (Ireland, 2024)
Eight Eyes (USA/Serbia, 2021)
Poor Things (Ireland/UK/USA, 2023)
Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (Italy, 1973)
Longlegs (USA, 2024)
Night of Fear (Australia, 1973)
Stopmotion (UK, 2024)
Terrifier (USA, 2016)
Azrael (USA, 2024)
Faust (Germany, 1926)
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Hong Kong, 1991)
I Saw the TV Glow (USA, 2024)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.