Impetigore is an insane movie of curses, black magic, and backwoods village superstition in Indonesia. Director and writer Joko Anwar’s previous title, Satan’s Slaves, was a remake of a 1982 Sisworo Gautama Putra movie of the same name. Impetigore marked Anwar’s return to horror after a small break for a television show, a superhero flick, and a few other projects. So, let’s get to it.

Impetigore starts off with Maya (Tara Basro) working at a toll booth plaza with her friend Dini (Marissa Anita) as Maya gets attacked by a man saying that to lift his village's curse, he needed to kill her. This attack leads Maya to investigate with her aunt to find out that her family is from a village in the backwoods of the country. Maya did not remember her family at all and remembered being raised by her aunt. Part of what she found out was that she may inherit her family’s estate knowing that they were dead. Upon returning to the village, something just doesn’t seem right. After speaking to the village elder, they are told to come back the next day to speak with Ki Saptadi (Ario Bayu), the village puppeteer that is known throughout the area.

Maya and Dini are checking out the village under the story that they are college students doing research on the puppeteers and shows they perform. While walking through the village they come across the cemetery and find that there are a lot of children’s graves. During the progress of the story you find that the village has a curse that causes all the children to be born with no skin and are killing the babies after birth to prevent the suffering. Maya’s family's house has been abandoned since they died 20 years earlier, which is where Maya and Dini stay while they are in the village, a huge abandoned almost mansion in the middle of huts and small homes in the midst of a jungle. To banish the curse, the village is under the belief they need to catch and kill Maya but skinning her and making puppets from her skin. 

Ultimately the movie has a lot of atmosphere with a ton of creep factor in the strange village with its cautious and suspicious villagers. The way the story goes, you expect some sort of supernatural events to happen in the abandoned mansion but never really does and it doesn’t detract from the overall story and environment that is built as the movie goes. The final turn in the movie was slightly unexpected for me. Some imagery in the movie may be a bit disturbing and unnerving for some involving babies. Overall it was a fantastic movie of believable superstition and tension that brought back memories of the early 2000s Tartan Films Asian horror I used to watch due to how different they were from all the jump scares of typical American horror and remakes of Asian classics. All in all I highly recommend a viewing and will be looking into Arwan’s other works.

RORSCHACH RATING:

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Victims and Villains is written Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey (and produced by), Caless Davis, Dan Rockwood, & Brandon Miller. Music by Mallory Johnson and others. This post was edited by Cam Smith. Impetigore is property of Shudder. We do not own nor claim any rights. Impetigore is now streaming exclusively on Shudder.

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