Money speaks everywhere in the world and in all creative industries, so Dancing Village: The Curse Begins comes as no surprise following KKN di Desa Penari, the highest-grossing film in Indonesian history. Knowledge of the former is not necessary to understand the latter (enjoyment is another story). Based on SimpleMan’s novel KKN di Desa Penari, which began as a Twitter thread, little distinguishes The Curse Begins from the bulk of Hollywood horror beyond its East Java setting. A threatening supernatural being inflicts multi-generational trauma on a small community, a relic has been taken that needs returned, and only a shamanistic religious ritual can counter the infliction. If that description sounds familiar, that’s because the same approximate logline could represent roughly half of the modern horror genre, and its commerciality will ensure the trend stays around for some time longer.
Mila’s (Maudy Effrosina) mother is dying, and the local shaman instructs her and her cousin Yuda (Jourdy Pranata) to return a stolen bangle to a village in the far east of Java to renew her mother’s strength. They waste no time searching for this place, bringing along their friends Jito (M. Iqbal Sulaiman) and Arya (Ardit Erwandha). They soon find a village, known for their dancers, deep in the forest and in semi-isolation from neighboring communities. Local woman Ratih (Claresta Taufan Kusumarina) opens her home to Mila, and the two bond over the identical decay of their mothers. But as Mila quickly discovers, things are more complicated than simply returning the bangle, and Badarawuhi (Aulia Sarah) now haunts her.
Notably, there’s something quite old school about The Curse Begins, but not in a complimentary way. In this world, lesbianism threatens communal disorder and the safety of Mila. The film’s scary supernatural force is… a beautiful woman? The Badarawuhi doesn’t even have any creaturely designs or menacing features, and instead spends a significant portion of her time on screen merely sliding her fingers seductively across the skin of her mostly female victims — “Your scent is enticing,” Badarwuhi whispers. Mila’s mom warns her of the supernatural being’s “persuasions” much in the way a father might warn his daughter of the questionable intentions of young men.
With regard to its horror visuals, The Curse Begins works best as iconoclasm aimed at beauty standards and first-class lifestyles rather than trying to induce jump scares. The decaying, rotting, and thus visibly stinky mothers — who aren’t actually that old but appear to be aging rapidly, puss oozing from their flakey skin — strike hard against feminine beauty standards by exacerbating and exploiting the fear of aging. In one supernatural ritual to ward off Badarawuhi, a group of dancers end up in a mystical third space where faceless children run about as if nothing were wrong. Their entire faces, or what would be their faces, look something like the mouth of a spider with “natural” vanishing points in the center of their visage. This disruption of any specificity or identifying features complements the horror of aging emphasized elsewhere, and synthesizes into a broader sense of discomfort regarding beauty standards. In other words, instead of relying on jumping out of closets and dark rooms to generate one-second bodily reactions, The Curse Begins funneled its horror through the horrible realization that one day, if you aren’t already, you too will grow old and decrepit.
As is also the way with so much modern horror, humans aren’t the only living creatures important to Stamboel’s latest; the village setting creates ample opportunity for wildlife to also budge into the story. Snakes swimming in a pool, monkeys for dinner main course, dead livestock, and a village elder capable of transforming into a black dog — our non-human friends play a variety of roles here. They can be victim (monkeys, livestock), symbols of evil (snakes), or even beacons of freedom sent to save suffering people from Badarawuhi’s curse (black dog). But what all of these functions have in common is their utility to humans. Good and bad, evil and sublime, each animal’s appearance reacts to human interference in the plot. Even the snakes get in the pool only through the trickery of Badarawuhi, a humanoid supernatural being. Which is to say, the sum of Stamboel’s latest is some decidedly familiar stuff. Given how pro forma all of these horror textures, tricks, and images, it would also, unfortunately, probably take a fair bit of trickery to get this writer back on the couch for the next Dancing Village.
DIRECTOR: Kimo Stamboel; CAST: Aulia Sarah, Maudy Affrosina, Jourdy Pranata, M. Iqbal Sulaiman; DISTRIBUTOR: Shudder; STREAMING: August 16; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 2 min
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