FrightFest review – Ghost in the Cell

FrightFest review – Ghost in the Cell

After a newspaper editor is disembowelled and artfully hung on a ceiling fan, meek reporter Dimas (Endy Arfan) is convicted of murder and sent to the toughest cell block in a Jakarta prison to share a cell with psychotic hit man Tokek (Aming Sugandhi), who promises to rip him apart.  However, a distorted doppelganger of Tokek – a disturbingly creepy figure – does to the killer what he’s promised to do to Dimas and arranges him into a working human shower.  Six (Yoga Pratama), a psychic prisoner, can see auras and works out that Dimas has brought a killer ghost with a creative bent into prison with him … and that it has the habit of butchering those with red auras (ie: the angriest, most aggressive inmates – and guards).

Writer-director Joko Anwar, Indonesia’s leading horror man (Impetigore), takes a few licks from ‘Asian extreme’ prison pictures like Riki-Oh but also does a specifically Indonesian take on the ‘haunted prison’ quickies which got made in the US (Prison, The Chair) mostly because decommissioned prisons were cool places to film in.  A repeated refrain whenever some hopeless instance of corruption is uncovered is ‘this is Indonesia not Norway’ and the ancient ghost is enraged by a particularly modern crime – well-connected politicians who have taken bribes to enable unethical deforestation in Borneo – and has even latched on to the reporter who tried to uncover the story in order to get into jail, only to find it’s stuck in Block C where all the angry ordinary thug prisoners are rather than the cushy Block K where bribes mean that convicted swindlers with government connections live in luxury.

Anwar comes up with some fresh concepts for the rage-targeting spirit – in order to get the red out of their auras, tough cons have to flock to the prayer room or dance studio because religious devotion or artistic endeavour fends off the body-twisting horror.  In several heated fight scenes, the participants have to take time out to pray or do some dance moves so the ghost will latch onto someone else.  It has all the regulars from prison movies – the sadistic head guard, the con with dignity who protects the innocent, the cell block boss, the guide who shows the fresh fish around, the extreme psycho – and has fun with conventions like the shower scene (yes, soap is dropped) and the mess hall freakout.  The gore is extreme, if near-surreal – and it has a bright, oddly upbeat feel.