'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.