Grave Torture Review: Joko Anwar Film is Confusing and Conflicting

In this Indonesian psychological horror film, Sita and her brother Adil, after losing their parents to a suicide bomber, are plagued by heartbreak, resulting in Sita becoming distrustful of religion. Grappling with the trauma of losing her parents, she decides to go into the grave of the most sinful person and prove that the torment of the grave does not exist. However, that has disastrous results.

With a runtime of 117 minutes, the film is a remake of Anwar’s short film of the same name.

Grave Torture Review

In Joko Anwar’s dark and gritty psychological horror film, one cannot help but be enamoured by everything that is happening one after another. First and foremost, the thought of going into the grave with a rotting corpse seems like a horror film and a half, but with everything that happens in the siblings’ lives from the moment their parents end up dying thanks to a psychotic factory worker just adds more heartbreak for the viewers because it adds a layer of trauma to both of their lives purpose.

Grave Torture isn’t just your average Indonesian horror movie with a ton of jump scares and whatnot, the movie has several dark and gritty themes of guilt, trauma and finding propose that leaves viewers feeling extremely uncomfortable at every moment. We follow Sita on her journey to prove that religion is a crutch that many use to excuse the bad behaviour of human beings, or, in her case, lie with a sinful man in his grave to prove that torture in the grave isn’t a thing that many make it out to be. There’s determination in Sita’s character from when she was young – you love following her on her odd quest because she is so determined in every step that she takes.

However, her character, or the story actually, loses steam towards the middle when a lot of different things happen in Sita’s life and we don’t see enough of Adil or his trauma either. The movie also finds itself going down traditional avenues of horror that are more cliched and less psychological, leaving viewers not finding themselves as intrigued by the storyline as you’d expect. These cliched scenarios take away so much from the psychological aspect of the film, leaving you wondering how any of it matters in the grand scheme of things.

Sita’s moral dilemmas and path to understanding are complex and impactful, especially during the first half. Even that loses steam in the second half when she herself loses steam, no longer being driven by her desire to prove that religion is false and simply a tool for manipulation. The second half is also more jumpscares-based and goes through these moments of her and everyone around her being haunted by ghosts for some reason. No longer do we see the tunnels of sins haunting us and reminding us of our shortcomings and whatnot. Now, we are simply left to sit through one ghost jumping out from behind the pillar after another; one even makes its way out of Sita’s nightmare and into our screens. The sharp contrast of tone of the first and second half is what gives us whiplash, leaving us feeling a bit confused and dissatisfied with the incoherent story.

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Ending Siksa Kubur, we see Sita confronting her demons… or some demons. I found the messaging in this part of the movie a little all over and it sometimes feels like it’s trying to say that everyone should be very afraid of grave torture. Although there is some discussion to be had surrounding confronting your past and accepting the part of the blame in everything that happened, I can’t help but wonder why Sita had anything to do with her parents dying.

Anyway, the more we moved towards the conclusion, the less coherent the story felt, leaving me feeling rather annoyed with everything. Ethical and moral concerns aside, Sita’s journey takes us down a confusing loop of whether or not religion and demons torturing sinful souls in their graves are true and more so whether HR would say anything to her after she gets into a client’s grave. My two cents – probably not because she has main character plot armour.

Final Thoughts

Although the movie starts off strong with a determined protagonist out to prove something scientific, we end Grave Torture with the same old cliched horror movie tropes and themes that don’t seem to let go of us. In spite of promising us something thought-provoking and noteworthy at first, there is something sorely missing from the psychological aspects of the movie. With all the promises at first, the film is totally unimpressive when it ends, leaving us with conflicting feelings.

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