The family of Rini is financially broken and she lives with her father, her mother that is ill, her grandmother that is crippled, and her brothers Tony, Bondi, and the mute six-year-old Ian in an old house in the countryside nearby a cemetery. Her mother, who was a successful singer, is dying from a mysterious disease and her father does not have money to support the family. When her mother dies, her father needs to travel to the city to sell the house and weird things happen in the house. The skeptical Rini befriends Hendra, son of the religious Ustadz, and they learn that her mother was infertile and joined a cult that worships Satan to have children. And now, when Ian will be seven, they will take the boy with them. What can they do to protect Ian?
Asian Horror Movie Reviews: Satan’s Slave
Thoughts of the devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan always conjures up images of Baphomet, goats, and red-horned, bearded beings. I know, frightening. When I learned of the Indonesian horror flick, Satan’s Slaves, I prepared myself for some good old-fashioned frights. Growing up a catholic, I was taught to not only fear God but also to fear his foe, the man down below. Did I believe that there was a red man with horns brandishing a pitchfork with hooves for feet? Absolutely not. What frightened me was not knowing the dark presence of an evil being whose work we see all around us: war, murders, violence. This is one of the reasons why The Omen (1976) is a delightfully disturbing movie. It gives us a look behind the curtain of what is at play between the forces of good and evil. The devil, too, is like a thief in the night and wants to catch us while we are asleep with our guard down, and he will do whatever is within his means to deceive us. Like Keyser Söze said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
After the matriarch of a family passes away, her surviving husband and children must fend to make ends meet when the money runs dry. The mother seemed to have been the breadmaker for many years after once being a famous musical artist. Mysterious things start to happen, and things seem to be amiss. It doesn’t help that they live nearly across the street from the cemetery where their mother is buried. Bondi, one of the sons, has it in his find that his mother will rise from the grave and come home. He soon comes to learn that there are strange things already happening inside the house.
Satan’s Slaves had great promise initially with some decent scares and a frightening tone and atmosphere. Again, there were similarities to The Omen in that there is a dark force looming over the family’s head at play. It is evident there is more than meets the eye with the history of the mother and children, and a mystery unfolds. The reveal, however, is significant to the film’s plot, but its execution is rather weak in that there was no shock value to it, nor did it make my ears perch. There was a valiant effort by the filmmakers to make the final climax grand but, in my opinion, failed to do so.
There is an original film that was released in 1982, but being that I did not see that one, I cannot make a fair comparison between the two. However, I will say that there was much fanfare about this one, and I went in expecting a lot and was somewhat disappointed when it did not live up to my expectations. Was it a bad film? Not at all, but it was far from great, and I would say that it was a decent watch and not something that I will revisit anytime soon.