Starring Shareefa Daanish, Ario Bayu, Sigi Wimala
Directed by Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto (The Mo Brothers)
Welcome back to the Necropolis. You know, it was really only a matter of time before I did a review for a movie with the words "Necropolis" or "Macabre" in it. And in case some of you might be thinking it, no I'm not planning on doing a Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis review. The only way that's going to happen is if I decide to do a RotLD Retrospective, which down the road may well happen. In the meantime, I'm going to talk a little about Macabre, a movie which has been taking a backseat to other movies I preferred to watch. This is mostly because movies about people killing people aren't that high on my interest list compared to other types of horror. But I finally sat myself down, and got through it. Let's see how it did, shall we?
Ok, so to summarize as quickly as I can, 5 friends are on a road trip to the city of Jakarta. On the way there they see a woman standing in the rain and decide to give her a ride home, as she lives in the same direction. Upon arriving, the strange woman, who is named Maya, persuade the friends to come in and talk to her mother. The mother thanks the group and invites them to stick around to rest and eat before continuing. The friends are reluctant to do so, but eventually accept. While pregnant Astrid goes upstairs to a guest room with husband Adjie for rest, the others sit down to eat and drink. They end up being drugged, and are tied up and hauled away to another part of the house. From here on in, their night becomes a nightmare.
This is one of those movies where some patience is required. It's approximately 30 minutes in where things start to happen. Before that you do get a feel for how odd the mother and her "siblings" are. To be perfectly honest, there's not a whole lot to say about this movie. The acting was decent enough, but the protagonists are dumb to the point of frustration. Granted, most people aren't in such a situation like the characters in Macabre are, so fear and panic may lead to less than intelligent decisions. At the same time, I would also think that the instinct for self-preservation would eventually kick in, thus leading to more pro-active choices made. Even later on, when a team of four police officers show up, they were quite inept and increased my frustration a little.
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| If you want something chainsawed right, you gotta do it yourself! |
However, you gorehounds out there will be rewarded for your patience. Macabre certainly delivers the goods when it comes to violence and torture. A few of the characters in this, both good and bad, take an incredible amount of punishment throughout, and still come back for more. And the effects were very impressive, to the point where I winced a few times when something particularly nasty happened to someone. That's not something that happens to me often folks.
Well, I think this is a record for shortest review. Sorry about that everyone. Macabre doesn't have a lot to it really. The story isn't anything original or special, and as I said before the characters will probably frustrate you here and there. But if you're looking to kill 90 minutes some evening with some good old-fashioned violence, you might want to check this one out. I watched it on Netflix myself. For those of you who might not have Netflix, maybe it'll be in your local video store, so keep an eye out. Next time, I plan on looking at an Italian horror that I haven't seen in a very long time. We'll see if it holds up after all these years. Until then, rest in peace.
Macabre Rating: 3 out of 5 tombstones
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