'Satu Nyawa' is totally amateurish

'Satu Nyawa' is totally amateurish

Joko E.H. Anwar, Contributor, Jakarta

Satu Nyawa dalam Denting Lonceng Kecil (One Soul in a Ring of a
Small Bell); Minus zero stars (out of ****); Horror, 90 minutes;
Starring Jajang C. Noer, Nana Prambors; Directed by Abi Prasidi;
A Prasidi Group/Dream Station Production; In Indonesian.

While several Asian countries can be proud because their horror
movies (The Ring, The Eye) make worldwide hits, Indonesia, in the
meantime, can only swallow this bad news.

A new star rating system should be created for this shockingly
inept, incompetently made movie which will embarrass anyone who
has ever worked in the film industry.

The fact that the filmmakers are confident enough to release
it to public is intriguing and will tickle anyone who is familiar
with Edward D. Wood Jr. who is hailed as the grandfather of bad
movies in the U.S.

However, while Wood's works, mostly sci-fi and horror, somehow
make a hilariously campy experience for the audience, Satu Nyawa
dalam Denting Lonceng Kecil is painful to watch.

Shot mainly during weekends in two weeks on digital video, the
movie shows no hint of the filmmakers understanding the basics of
filmmaking.

The movie opens alarmingly badly with a fake full moon and
proceeds with an incomprehensible tracking shot which will match
any home video produced by a 12-year-old.

The story revolves inside a family with a drunk father who is
later killed by someone in the family and ends up being a ghost
who often shows up in the house.

Months after the murder, several university students move into
the house and keep seeing the ghost.

As you can expect, the ghost will haunt the students whose
names you will not even care to remember.

It is totally useless to talk about the lack of character
development since nobody in the cast (mostly radio DJs) seems to
have any idea of how they got into this mess.

Worse, there are several subplots which do not have anything
to do with the movie!

Most of the time, you will not understand what is going on
because not only do you have to endure the jittery camerawork,
the dialog is incomprehensible.

Prolific actress Jajang C. Noer -- who recently won Best
Supporting Actress at the Cinemaya Film Festival in India for her
role in Eliana, Eliana -- is wasted here in a totally laughable
script.

While most bad movies, including Indonesian horrors, made in
the 80s, are still watchable because they were humbly made, Satu
Nyawa dalam Denting Lonceng Kecil is very unpleasant because of
its pretentiousness.

It is obvious that the filmmaker intended to shoot the movie
using a hand-held technique a la TV series NYPD Blues, with an
embarrassing result.

During the premiere, the audience kept laughing every time the
ghost showed up.

One thing that may make the audience stay until the closing
credit rolls is to see how bad the movie gets. Believe me, it
goes too far. And can anyone explain the movie's tasteless title
which has nothing to do with the movie?

The movie is soon being released to local multiplexes and will
arguably be the worst movie ever put in movie theaters.

The 21 group, who own most of the film theaters in the country
and who keep being accused of hampering the progress of the local
film industry, strangely keep giving opportunities for local
movies which actually will not pass as entertainment to be shown
at their theaters.

The release of Satu Nyawa dalam Denting Lonceng Kecil hits the
alarm bells for the fledgling local movie industry because there
seems to be no quality control applied to movies being shown to
the public.

This year's Indonesia Independent Film Festival (FFII), which
is organized by private TV station SCTV, showed several entries
which were more suitable to be called amateur rather than
independent.

Several so-called independent film festivals can take credit
for urging many filmmaker wannabes to start making movies using
any equipment they can get hold of.

However, they also should take some blame for moviemakers'
thinking that they can feed the public with their crap.

If this condition persists, our list of local movies will be
long, but most of them will be movies we do not want other people
to see.