Who doesn’t like a good horror film? But while popular Western films like The Conjuring franchise and the Insidious franchise, along with Asian gems like the Ju-On series from Japan or the well-made horror films from South Korea become the talk of the town, horror connoisseurs seldom show love to the gems of horror from Indonesia that they truly deserve.

ROH

This arthouse indie horror film might just be one of the best folk-horror films to come out of Asia. Somewhat of a slow-burner, the plot of Roh might seem a little obscure at first, but rest assured, everything gets explained at the end of the film. The film revolves around a family living in the remote corner of an Indonesian forest, who come across a seemingly traumatized little girl. As soon as they take her in, the wheels of the events of the film are set in motion. Rather horrifying at times, Roh can be considered a true beauty in filmmaking as it tackles a rather layered storyline, where viewers discover that the main conflict is between man and nature.

IMPETIGORE

With a horror quotient much higher than Roh, this Joko Anwar film is a significant entry in the list of Indonesian folk-horror films. Following the story of Maya, a toll booth worker who returns to her birthplace with her friend in search of an inheritance, Impetigore establishes very early on that humans, of flesh and blood, can be as terrifying as the paranormal. Maya returns to her birthplace, a place she has almost no memory of, looking to sell her ancestral home, soon to find out that there is something very wrong with the village, especially her ancestral home. Extremely well-made, with a soundtrack that deserves its own applause, Anwar conjures absolute terror while maintaining subtlety with the use of horror elements. 

SATAN’S SLAVES

A more popular entry in this list, Satan’s Slaves became the highest-grossing Indonesian film of 2017. The gothic horror film is a loose remake/prequel to a 1980 film of the same name, although Joko Anwar’s 2017 iteration is arguably the better one. The film focuses on a struggling family living in the countryside in 1981: Mawarni, her husband Bahri, his mother Rahma, and their four children. The family lives amid financial hardship as Mawarni is ill and bedridden, and the royalties from her former singing career are long gone. After struggling with her illness for three years, Mawarni dies. But it seems that is not the end of her story, as she apparently returns for her kids. Once again from the brilliant mind of Joko Anwar, Satan’s Slaves is an occult/gothic horror gem that you wouldn’t want to miss!