FANTASIA 2018: SATAN’S SLAVES Movie Review

SATAN’S SLAVES

Fantasia 2018 Film Festival Review
By Jeff Sanders

It’s funny, Ari Aster’s HEREDITARY just came out in America and has been chocking up glowing reviews, and across this wet blueberry in Indonesia, Joko Anwar’s film SATAN’S SLAVES has been having a similar run. SATAN’S SLAVES was made first, although I doubt either filmmaker was aware of the others movie, it is interesting to see two pieces of pop celluloid made so close together that have a heart of darkness this similar. Must be something in the well water?

SATAN’S SLAVES is a remake of an early 80’s Indonesian Horror Film of the same name. I have not seen that film so I have no frame of reference of how similar it is to this one, but I can say that as a stand-alone experience, Joko Anwer has made a truly terrifying mosaic. He is a very good director and just about every sting his camera makes has his audience answering with a face slap and jump. I both loathe and love watching a film that makes me feel so gullible. Anwar knows what makes a good scare work but also something much more effective, dread. Scares generally go like this: first, an establishing, slow-moving shot that reveals nothing but creates a sense of unease with music and tone to accompany, second: lingering on the shot and a quieting, and third: a loud scary reveal. Repeat, mix it up and repeat again. It sounds cheap, and frankly, it is, but whether it’s Chuck Berry or Bill Haley demanding us to Shake, Rattle and Roll, you find yourself doing it if the player is good. Of course, none of this sticks without Dread. Dread is trickier business. Dread requires character and time, so when those scares come we have a sense of vicariousness to the victim. This is where most horror offerings get it wrong. Filmmakers (or financiers) don’t want to spend the time at risk of boring the audience. The backstory about a mother’s failing health and financial ruin that has placed a burden on a family having to now fend for themselves all while establishing her children as individuals can be removed, but that will ruin the disturbance in a film like this. A film about deals with the Devil. A film where love and betrayal, innocence and guilt, old sin and new skin all blend as Satan throws down his ball of confusion. Give the Devil some time, he will make you a believer soon enough. Anwar knows. So does Aster. I hope audiences will continue to take notice. This is fun horror. The kind of horror film you talk about with your friends and movie buddies for long after in frivolous debate.

Satan's Slaves (2018) - Movie Still — Courtesy of CJ Entertainment

I haven’t really talked about the film’s plot. I don’t think I should much. The basic setup is this. There are four children and a father who has been caring for their sick mother over the past three years. She was a talented musician. The mother is now grotesque, sick and bedridden and seems to feel terror coming through her bedroom window. She dies. Her presence, or what may be her presence still lingers in the house only revealing to specific children. It’s a classic setup and many tones and rings harken back to films of the 70s and 80s like BURNT OFFERINGS, THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, POLTERGEIST, THE OMEN and ROSEMARY’S BABY, but SATAN’S SLAVES never pulls from any one of these too deliberately (which was my only criticism towards HEREDITARY), so we never quite know how the film is going to end up, but we do get a sense that it won’t be good.

I do hope you seek out this film whenever it becomes available in North America. It is currently playing at the excellently curated Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal. SATAN’S SLAVES is well shot, directed with an assured hand, acted with conviction, loud and unnerving as hell. I don’t think a few subtitles are going to scare off anyone with material this effective. Let’s hope that there is a distributor up there in Canuckland that will take a roll.