Ivanna

Kimo Stamboel's direction brings a touch of gravitas, but no amount of blood and severed heads could save 'Ivanna' from its tacky writing. Another awful entry in an all-around awful series.

When I sat down here in 2023 to watch the 2022 Indonesian horror movie "Ivanna", I had never heard about the movie. So I only knew that I was in for an Indonesian horror movie experience, which was actually all that I needed to want to watch the movie.

Writer Lele Laila put together a fair enough script and storyline here, based on the novel by Risa Sawaswati. Not that I am in any way familiar with the novel, so I had no idea how true the movie's script is to the source material from the novel. Clearly the writer had no concept of how decay and decomposition works, especially with about 50 years passing and having a body part exposed to such a long time.

While "Ivanna" was a watchable movie, it was by no means a particularly outstanding foray in the Asian horror cinema. And for a lifelong horror afficianado such as myself, then director Kimo Stamboel's 2022 movie was a relatively slow paced trek.

The acting performances in "Ivanna" were good, and they definitely helped to keep the movie afloat. And my limited exposure to Indonesian cinema means that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble. Leading actress Caitlin Halderman, playing Ambar, really carried the movie quite well with her performance.

For a horror movie, then I have to say that I found "Ivanna" to be a bit on the generic side. Sure, the storyline was nice enough for a single viewing. But that is about it, a single viewing is all that the movie has to it.

My rating of "Ivanna" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Kimo Stamboel did his best to deliver a decent horror story with Ivanna. Sadly, the bland, repetitive, and lack of urgency script withhold all of his potentials. In the end, it's an overlong, monotonous, and dull film.

The plot is familiar, and if you've seen more than a handful of horror movies in your life, you'll pretty much know the score here. It is competently produced, shot, and acted for the most part, so it's decent to watch, just not much more than a genre recitation. There are a few, not entirely original, but at least moderately fresh elements, though not many. It actually had some reasonable scares too. If you're not Indonesian, it's at least interesting from the point of view of seeing a slice of Indonesia and an odd little window into how Indonesians look at their colonial past, or at least how this particular filmmaker sees it. It's a lot more pro-Dutch than I would have expected.

The plot works as it is. It's simple but the movie executions made up for its plot. It does waste some time to explore the "mystery" (Though from my personal experience, it's pretty predictable).

Now, the eerie/creepy moment at the start of the movie is the best part of the movie for me. Watching a headless body walks in the background with unaware characters really sells it. The atmosphere support these scenes.

The problem came with the slasher part of the movie. Without spoiling much, the movie only uses one kind of execution. Usually, one of the fun part of a slasher movie is watching how the killer creatively execute his/her victim. In Ivanna there is only one method, and it start gets boring aftering watching it done for the third time.

Overall, it's entertaining enough for me, for an Indonesian horror movie, it does a decent job.