Late at night, after an exhausting hike up Indonesia’s Mount Gede, Maya wakes to find her friend Itha missing from their tent. Several minutes of frantic searching later, she finds her crouched, alone, in a patch of tall grass – giggling.
“I’m talking to my friend,” Itha explains. Except no one else is there.
My whole body jolts as that “friend” suddenly erupts onto the screen. It’s the most terrified I’ve ever been in a movie theater – the kind of scared that has you peeking through your fingers and spilling popcorn on your neighbor. In my case, that’s longtime Indonesian film critic Ekky Imanjaya, who looks completely unfazed.
Why We Wrote This
Indonesia’s horror film boom points to deeper religious and cultural beliefs behind the scary movies that are packing cinemas.
He’s seen hundreds of movies like “Haunting of Mount Gede.” Horror is by far the most popular genre of Indonesian cinema, accounting for 60% of the 258 movies made in the country last year, according to the Indonesian Film Board.
But these aren’t like many of the scary movies shown in theaters across the United States, in which fright itself is the point. Indonesia’s horror boom is built upon the archipelago’s rich folklore, passed down from generation to generation, and an enduring belief in the supernatural.
All countries have their own sort of ghost story, says Dr. Imanjaya, a film studies lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, but “many Indonesian people believe that it’s true.” Indonesians’ fascination with their country’s unique blend of Islam and folklore has helped the local film industry thrive, while those in other developing nations struggle to compete with American blockbusters.
“We are very close to this folklore, this urban legend,” explains Dr. Imanjaya. People “like to be frightened with something familiar.”
Lindsey McGinnis/The Christian Science Monitor
Scared – and reassured – by the supernatural
References to the supernatural appear everywhere in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation. The city of Pontianak takes its name from a vengeful female spirit that the city’s founding sultan is said to have expelled in the late 1700s. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a village in Java used patrollers dressed as ghosts to deter people from leaving their houses. And in a Jakarta museum dedicated to traditional Indonesian puppetry, a small wooden figure with a sheer, scarlet headscarf depicts the “Sweet Maiden of Ancol Bridge” – a woman who, according to legend, still haunts the bridge in northern Jakarta where she died.
Wayang Museum librarian Dwi Nur Ratnasari says this connection with the supernatural predates the arrival of organized religion in the first century.
“Before religion came to Indonesia, we believed in animism and dynamism,” she says. Back then, it would be common for Indonesians to pray to the spirits of a tree or stone. These beliefs blended with Hinduism and Buddhism, and when Islam began to spread through the archipelago in the 1200s, the culture evolved further.
Today, more than 87% of Indonesians identify as Muslim. Only 0.04% put themselves in the “folk/other” category. Yet a widespread reverence for local ghosts and other folklore persists.
“We still believe in ghosts,” says Ms. Ratnasari. “We acknowledge their existence amongst us; they are there as part of our universe. But we cannot worship them.”
Today, these spirits, known as danyang, are treated like neighbors that “we need to respect,” says Dr. Imanjaya. Offending them, many Indonesians believe, can invite tragedy, chaos – or a good movie plot.
Lindsey McGinnis/The Christian Science Monitor
Indonesian horror films improve
“Haunting of Mount Gede” has all the fixings of a modern Indonesian fright night: a host of angry danyang, an evil jinni (Islamic phantom), and a plot inspired by real-life events.
What audiences won’t find are common Western horror tropes, such as when Hollywood protagonists hear a strange noise and “get curious,” says Dr. Imanjaya, pantomiming a character sheepishly peering around a corner to investigate a disturbance.
“I don’t do that,” he laughs, waving his hand. “If I got scared, I’d pray with something from the Holy Quran.”
That’s how the protagonists in most Indonesian films react, too. They turn to Islam as a source of comfort and protection, and rarely waste time debating whether ghosts exist. When Itha returns from Mount Gede possessed by a mysterious spirit, her family immediately calls an ustad, or Islamic scholar, to try to heal her.
It’s these kinds of details that draw millions of Indonesians to theaters every year. Many international horror fans enjoy them as well. As streaming platforms carry Indonesian films to new audiences, foreign investment from Netflix, HBO, and other media giants has raised production values – something moviegoer Rifki Yusuf appreciates.
“Indonesian horror movies are gradually becoming a lot better,” he says, leaving the theater after watching “Haunting on Mount Gede.”
Mr. Yusuf, who came to the movies after his morning shift at a food manufacturing plant, says he didn’t find the film very scary. But he loved the cinematography and enjoyed the chance to reminisce about his own hikes up Mount Gede. He has been to the mountain five times, and for him, the creatures depicted in the film are more than just theater. “I know they are there,” he says.
Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata supported reporting for this story.
