If there are two signatures to Indonesian horror, they would be an overwhelming sense of relentless dread, and poisonous centipedes.
The Queen of Black Magic has plenty of both, and an enthralling supernatural siege story binding everything together so tight you ll barely be able to breathe.
This sinister monarch is actually a sort-of remake of the 1981 Indonesian horror of the same name, which was actually an unlicensed spin-off from
Black Magic and
Black Magic 2, the mid-Seventies hyper-gruesome horrors by Hong Kong action experts the Shaw Brothers. The script by Joko Anwar follows much the same broad approach as he did with his own revolutionary remake of groundbreaking 1981 shocker
Not Rated
Indonesia is a vastly underrated region of the world when it comes to horror films. This may not be news to many hardcore horror buffs who have long appreciated what the region brings in terms of frights, but to many American moviegoers the country is often overlooked as a hotbed of Asian horror in favor of Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. That situation has been fortunately improving in recent years and 2020 even saw
Impetigore, the most recent film from Joko Anwar, submitted as the country’s submission for the Academy Awards.
While the spotlight on Indonesia as a go-to place for horror is fairly new in the U.S., the country has a long tradition in the genre. One of its cult classics is