Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
The Netflix description for Indonesian horror film “Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku” is compelling as hell – Returning home from their honeymoon, a couple find themselves haunted by a disembodied head seeking its missing body.
Director Hanung Bramantyo has co-written “Trinil” with Haqi Achmad, and the story is based on a radio play from 1980, a fact that’s acknowledge in the introductory credits of the film. The synopsis for the plot instantly reminded me of the offbeat 2019 French animated flick “I Lost My Body” (Original title: J’ai perdu mon corps), which is about a severed hand looking for its body. But while “I Lost My Body” was a slow-burn, metaphorical and almost poetic take on identity, “Trinil” is a campy horror movie, with awful special-effects and unintentionally funny moments.
Carmela van der Kruk portrays the principal protagonist Rara, the heiress of a sprawling tea estate afflicted with a string of mysterious deaths during her three-month honeymoon with her husband Sutan (Rangga Nattra). Upon their return, Rara begins to suffer from sleep paralysis, and a ghost begins to haunt the couple, prompting Sutan to enlist the help of a supernatural expert named Yusof (Fattah Amin). As Yusof begins to investigate the eerie events of the estate, buried truths of Rara’s cursed family begin to emerge, and the ghost demands its body back.
The characters of Rara and Sutan are poles apart, while Rara is a snobbish, domineering rich brat with a nasty attitude, Sutan her husband is completely henpecked and mousy. Neither of the characters are likable, so as a viewer, their haunting is rather hilarious, because you couldn’t care less if they died. Also, the twist in the tale becomes pretty apparent in the first half, although the back-story is quite intriguing, even if very trope-y.
While the tea plantation setting and Rara’s family bungalow make for great background in the tale, the special-effects of the ghostly head is pretty bad. “Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku” is a loud, exaggerated horror film, with mediocre performances and close to no scary scenes, despite an interesting premise. At least horror enthusiasts who watch scary titles on a regular basis will not find any chills in this offering. Surprisingly, the climax is a lot more earnest than the rest of the story, and if the makers had just toned down the garish special-effects and mawkish characterization of their primary character, “Trinil: Kembalikan Tubuhku” could’ve been a lot more memorable.
Rating: 4 on 10. You can stream “Trinil” on Netflix.
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