Satan's Slaves (Joko Anwar, 2017)

Probate is hell

One of the darlings of Indonesian’s flourishing horror cinema output over the past decade, Satan’s Slaves (Pengabdi Setan in its native language) has deservedly enjoyed much international success.

Mawarni Suwono has been on her deathbed for quite a while by the time the film starts. Her husband, Bahri, has remortgaged the house to pay for her medical treatment, but even so much of her daily care falls upon her two adult children, Rini and Toni.

Her two younger kids, Bondi and Ian, meanwhile, are so disturbed by the living corpse of a woman their mother has become, that they’re scared to be in the same room with her.

It wasn’t always like this. Once, Mawarni was a famous popular singer. But as just as her health has declined, so too have her record sales. The future looks bleak: for Mawarni specifically, but also for the entire Suwono family’s financial future.

And then Mawarni dies. Or does she?

One-by-one, the family experience visions, dreams, and other ghostly encounters with what might either Mawarni or some evil entity impersonating her. Either way, the scares rapidly stack up and it quickly becomes clear that whatever haunts the Suwono family isn’t just playing mean tricks — it is absolutely deadly.

Rini discovers that her mother may have been involved in a Satanic cult that was the source of her former talent and fame, and that her death has now triggered her debt to the devil to come due — namely, the life and soul of one of her children… and the ultimate evil has come to collect.

Now, I’m normally very turned off by religious horror in all forms. Films like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby (to which Satan’s Slaves can inevitably be compared, as well as its prequel, Apartment 7A) just don’t do anything for me. I’ve always attributed that to the fact that as a non-religious person, my non-belief in all things Satanic renders them unscary and, actually, quite boring.

(This explanation, however, completely ignores that fact that even though I don’t believe in zombies, ghosts or witches either, I still enjoy being terrified by films about them; so go figure.)

However, Satan’s Slaves’ cultural differentness sidesteps this problem; Indonesia is an Islamic country, and so that alone is very different from American cinema’s adherence to the Christian Devil. Perhaps more significantly, there is no “boss” bad guy that is the Devil incarnate here; rather there are many malevolent creatures running around and causing death and dread.

It's also worth noting that despite the inclusion of a Muslim Ustad, the film never feels like it buys into the whole religious thing at all. Islam might well be the dominant religion of the land, but the Suwono family is definitively portrayed as non-religious, and folkloric superstition is granted equally serious treatment as Islam by the film.

All of which is to say that despite the fact the film literally has “Satan” in the name (and that alone would normally be a huge turnoff for me), I found the film to be an exemplary horror movie that is truly terrifying and utterly enjoyable.

Everything about this film worked for me. The foreign arthouse aesthetic matched with the ambitious yet effective use of every weapon in the horror film’s arsenal — jump scares, spooky atmosphere, and an overabundance of strategically placed mirrors to name but a few — successfully combines to create a truly chilling scary movie.