Tamara is a successful ghost story vlogger whose career turns upside down after she uploads a video of a fake ghost encounter. Wanting to prove to everyone that she’s not a fake, she takes her film crew to the legendary Ghost Market run by a sadistic spirit who demands sugarcane as an offering.
Her friends end up dead and she turns up at the closest village all disheveled, resulting in the local police chief determined to investigate the case. But what the chief discovers defies reality, questioning what really happened to the film crew at the Ghost Market.
It’s taken more than two years for this movie to reach the home video market, and just like Vina: Before 7 Days, Indonesia’s most successful box office horror movie, I’d given up hope that this one was ever going to come out. But it’s finally here, and now I will answer the question of: was it worth the wait?
The answer to that depends on what kind of movie you were expecting in the first place. I’ll be honest, I thought this would be just another supernatural possession movie about a bunch of teenagers, a remote village and an urban legend curse. You can imagine my surprise when we are introduced to the police chief who is determined to investigate what is really going on.
And I feel this is where the movie is providing something new and fresh to the very, very crowded Indonesian horror movie market. Borrowing from Hollywood horror cinema, the main characters in this movie are not exactly a likeable bunch. Not even Tamara, the main antagonist, is a particularly pleasant person. And the movie plays with this quite well, allowing the audience to determine the level of distain they will have for each character. Is Kevin a ruthless businessman or a caring manager? Is Caca a scheming vixen or is she being exploited? That’s for you decide.
But the strongest characters are Rani, the new young female police chief, and Rahmat, the old guard played by the instantly recognisable veteran horror movie actor Kiki Narendra. He is the yin to her yang. He believes in the supernatural and spirits. He believes village law should be followed and anything that interferes with that will lead to chaos. She believes in the law and doing things by the operating manual. She doesn’t believe in the supernatural and she might just have enough evidence to back her up.
That evidence is supplied by the found footage element of the movie. Now usually I stay away from found footage movies as far as I can - with only a handful of outstanding exceptions like the Korean film Gonjiam and the Taiwanese film Incantation. But they are found footage films from start to end. This movie uses the footage to fill in the gaps of what happened at the market the night everything went to hell. And none of the footage matches anything that Tamara claims.
And that’s what I really enjoyed about this film - the way it questioned what was going on and what you were seeing. The way it plants a seed in your head about supernatural stories and why some people are just so quick to believe it when the practical, realistic answer is staring them right in face. Yes, this is a horror film. There are ghosts and possession in this, but that’s not the main part of the story. There is violence, blood and gore. But that’s there only there as a scene dressing, not the main part of the film.
The main part is the battle between supernatural versus reality. And if you want to know the winner, you’ll have to watch the film.
GENRE Horror
DIRECTOR Wisnu Surya Pratama
STARRING Rana Audi Marissa, Roy Sungkono, Michelle Tahalea
ORIGINAL TITLE Pasar Setan
ALTERNATIVE TITLE Devil’s Market
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN Indonesia
RELEASE DATE 29 February 2024
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