Kuntilanak (film)

Kuntilanak is a 2006 Indonesian horror film directed by Rizal Mantovani. The English title is "The Chanting", although this is not a direct translation as Kuntilanak or Pontianak is a type of ghost in Indonesian (and wider Malay) folklore. In this movie, a student whose step-father molested her moves to a boarding house in a haunted area, this is followed by a series of killings.

Plot

Sam (Julie Estelle) is awakened by a nightmare in the middle of the night. In it, she was side sitting on the floor with a burning background, with a plate, a pair of scissors and a coral rock laid out at the front of her. She cuts a part of her hair. After seeing the haunting visage of a white haired creature, she wakes up. She calls her boyfriend, Agung (Evan Sanders). It seems that the dream Sam had was a recurring one, and he responds that he doesn't know what to do anymore, and Sam hangs up. Her perverted stepfather knocks boisterously on the door, making advances at her. Sam decides to move out once and for all.

She finds a boarding house from the newspaper that is situated a bit far from the city (Presumably Northern Jakarta), and after walking through an alley, she asks a few Betawi men who were playing cards in a warung for directions. One of the men tells her she should pay her respects to the fenced tree that is situated in the center of the old graveyard near the boarding house.

She meets the landlady, Yanti (Lita Soewardi), and Yanti explains that the house used to be the mess of the Mangkoedjiwo Batik factory in its heyday before the factory was burnt down decades ago and the workers perished in it, leaving the boarding house the only habitable space within the premises. The great-granddaughter of Panembahan Wiryocakti Mangkoedjiwo and owner of the boarding house, Raden Ayu Sri Sukmarahimi Mangkoedjiwo, now leaves the house open to be rented by local college students and a painting of her as a young lady is hung in the second floor landing, where there is a sealed room that Yanti prohibits any of the tenants to come close to.

When Yanti shows Sam her rented room, Sam was intrigued by an ornate mirror with the leering head of a wayang sculpted at the top. Sam then mentions the haunted tree to Yanti, to which she digressed as a myth (even though going so far as to explain the characteristics of the Kuntilanak that was said to inhabit the tree and chanting the tembang durmo, a chant that is used to summon the malevolent entity, leaving Sam in a vertiginious state). She then leaves after saying that it wouldn’t make any difference if she chanted it, since the only one who could summon it was a person that had a wangsit, a Javanese term for a supernatural mandate.

Agung, struggling with his papers on the subject of dreaming and disturbed by his girlfriend’s recurring nightmares, asks for advice from his eccentric friend Iwank (Ibnu Jamil). He explains that the dream Sam’s been having does not come from her sub-conscious, but from another realm.

He then meets up with Sam and she explains to him her recurring dream. He answers that it has something to do with her fear and worry, and admits that he doesn’t like her new residence. After taking her home and walking her to the boarding house, Agung finds a tile with an intriguing illustration of a root and scissors at the bottom of the fence that surrounds the tree and takes it home.

Sam arrives to see one of the house’s tenants, Alfon, apparently a flirtatious braggart psychic, speaking of energies and the supernatural beings residing within the house’s premises to the other tenants. He was enamored at Sam, but Dinda (Ratu Felisha), a brash, bracelet-making tenant Sam had met earlier, calls him a fraud after he read the palm of another tenant, and Sam goes to her room. As she laid in bed, she hears the surreal chanting and apprehensively tries to sleep.

The next day, Agung meets up with Iwank and asks him to inspect the tile he found near the tree. He then mentions to Iwank that the house was owned by the Mangkoedjiwo family. Iwank’s mother corrects him, saying that it was a black magic sect in the olden days that owned several factories, but since the disapproval of locals erupted, the sect disappeared from the public eye. Iwank then tells him that Kuntilanaks inhabit trees, but required a medium in order to leave their ethereal condition and enter the human realm, such as antiques in particular.

While trying to find her wallet in her room, Sam accidentally turned the chair into facing a wall, breaking a well known taboo in Javanese culture that Yanti pointed out earlier. The aloofness of her relationship with Agung was thickening when she meets up with him, and so he takes her home, only for her to refuse being walked into her boarding house.

Later that night, Sam experiences the same dream and sees the Kuntilanak combing her hair whilst sitting in the chair that faced the wall. She then wakes up to hear booming dangdut music coming from the room next to her and knocks on the tenant’s door. The tenant, Mawar, was enraged at Sam for disturbing her and the man she has in his room, claiming that she brings men there every night. Mawar threatens Sam with scissors and backs her up against a wall. Sam then falls into a trance-like state and chants the durmo, and because of no apparent reason, Mawar has a nosebleed. Dinda was awakened by the commotion along with the other tenants and Yanti and tells Mawar to leave with her boyfriend. Dinda asked her what was wrong, and Sam promptly throws up in the bathroom (and unbeknownst to Dinda, she threw up maggots). Dinda thinks she’s pregnant, and reminds her that next time, she should ask her for some condoms. She falls asleep and wakes up after dreaming that the Kuntilanak had just left her room. She finds her mirror tilted and scratch marks on the door frame, and spots the Kuntilanak going down the hall. She finds Mawar's scissors and follows the Kuntilanak outside, where it disappears.

The very next day, Sam, after discovering she had a scar on her shoulder, was informed by Dinda that Mawar had died. She was found by her man after he had left to buy some wine with her head turned backwards in a motel room and a fan’s propeller had impaled her neck. Yanti, in her office, makes a call to the Raden Ayu Sri Sukma, the owner of the house, if she had heard of the news.

Dinda took Sam to her room, where she offered Sam her handmade bracelets. Sam was surprised to find a mirror similar to hers in Dinda’s room, to which she replies that there are four mirrors in the house. One in her room, one in Sam’s and one in Ratih’s, failing to remember the fourth one. She then shows her friendliness towards Sam and tells her that she could tell her anything, considering they were both broken home girls. Agung then came by to see her, and Dinda tells him that she will take good care of Sam. Sam finds something amiss when the house’s servant prepared a fruit offering on the table under Raden Ayu’s portrait. Later that day, Iwank informs Agung that victims of the Kuntilanak had their heads turned backwards and that deepened Agung’s suspicion on Sam’s boarding house.

At night, Sam peeks into the second floor door and spots a vague glimpse of the Kuntilanak, only to be surprised by the sudden flirtatious advances of Alfon. Sam falls yet into another trance, and that freaked him out. Sam throws up maggots once more, and he finds himself with a nosebleed and in a disillusioned state. He takes off with his car, only to find the Kuntilanak sitting next to him and dies when the car crashes into a tree.

In the light of recent events, Raden Ayu Sri Sukma (Alice Iskak), pays the boarding house a visit and paid respects to the tree on her way there. She meets up with Yanti and the latter apologizes for being clumsy by chanting the durmo. She tells her that it’s fate and the durmo has chosen her, and asks to see Sam.

Sam hears of her neighbor’s death, and upon finding a second scar on her shoulder, realizes that she caused his death. Yanti and Raden Ayu finds her brooding in the foyer, and Yanti introduces the Raden Ayu to Sam. Agung comes by to see Sam, and the Raden Ayu comments that she has to let go of such a weak human being. Agung and Sam leave, and paid Iwank a visit. She finds a book on Kuntilanaks, and discovers the words ‘Sing kuat sing melihara’ (Javanese for ‘the strong one is the one that masters [the Kuntilanak]’) in it. Sam leaves immediately, and Agung follows her out and addresses the problems in their relationship. She angrily exclaims that she needs time, while Agung tells her that he needs her to explain what was going on. He asks for an apology and embraces her, but Sam tries to leave and tells him to leave her alone. Falling into another trance, she runs away and throws up maggots for the third time. She comes home and yells at the tree, telling the Kuntilanak to come out if she dares.

The next day, Agung’s mother calls her, telling her that Agung has disappeared. Sam herself has called him numerous times over the course of a few days to no avail. She then hears him calling her one night and searches for him. She was about to open the second floor door where the voice seems to be coming from when Yanti stopped her and angrily tells her to return to her room. Sam goes into Dinda’s room, scaling through the newspaper to see any signs of Agung. Dinda expresses her concern for him, to which Sam responded with an accusation that Dinda likes him. She falls into a trance, and Dinda digresses it as just one of her weird behaviors and leaves to have a shower. The Kuntilanak appears in the bathroom, and she dies when she hits her head against the bathroom wall.

As the paramedics took her body, the other tenants began to leave, frightened by the recurring deaths. Now alone in the house, Sam hears Agung’s voice and goes into the second floor room. She finds a variety of occult and macabre objects in the abandoned master bedroom and a portrait of the Panembahan Sakti Mangkoedjiwo. She finds Agung cowering in a state of terror in front of a mirror (the fourth mirror Dinda failed to mention). When she was about to leave, she discovers the Raden Ayu waiting for them near the doorway, telling her that she should separate herself from weak human beings. She says that the Mangkoedjiwo legacy has kept the Kuntilanak for years, and has continually made sacrifices to keep the Kuntilanak under the family’s will. She tells Sam that she has the gift to control the Kuntilanak and will carry on the wangsit. She falls into a trance, but is stopped when Agung persuades her to control herself. The Raden Ayu then tells her that she will teach her how to control her gift. She angrily refuses, to which the Raden Ayu responds by commencing a duel of chanting. Both chanted and the Kuntilanak leaves its arboreal domain. The Raden Ayu lost, experiencing the nose bleed. She pleads with her, saying that she’s not ready to die. She tells her to break all of the mirrors in the house.

Sam runs to her room and breaks the mirror with a pair of scissors in accordance to her recurring dreams. She breaks the second one, the one in Dinda’s room, with a coral rock, and the third one, in Ratih’s room, with a plate. She then remembers that there’s a fourth mirror in the second floor, and rushes there, only to discover that the Kuntilanak has successfully crawled out and disappears. She hears vague footsteps of a horse (in accordance to the traditional story of Kuntilanaks having horse feet) and finds the Raden Ayu in a state of terror and she pleads with her again. The Kuntilanak appears and breaks the jaws of the Raden Ayu, killing her instantly.

The Kuntilanak then cackles as two ghostly young girls eerily tries to push Sam into the mirror. Sam escapes, but is soon cornered by the Kuntilanak. As the Kuntilanak was about to break her jaws, Sam utters the words that she discovered in Iwank’s books, and the Kuntilanak retreats in a backwards fashion into the mirror and disappears.

A few days later, Agung, after being treated in the hospital with his injuries, visits Sam in the boarding house, now the sole inhabitant along with Yanti and the servants. Sam then tells him that she loves living in the boarding house, and sings the chant as she walks away, worrying Agung that things have only just begun.

Cast & Characters

• Julie Estelle as Samantha
• Evan Sanders as Agung
• Ratu Felisha as Dinda
• Alice Iskak as R.Ay, Sri Sukmarahimi Mangkoedjiwo
• Lita Soewardi as Yanti
• Ibnu Jamil as Iwank

The film received a DVD release in 2007. Sequels Kuntilanak 2 (2007) and Kuntilanak 3 (2008) were released.

External links

• Kuntilanak at the Internet Movie Database