Fridae

Singapore’s most celebrated filmmaker Eric Khoo has teamed up with Mike Wiluan, managing director of Singapore’s biggest post-production house Infinite Frameworks, to start a new boutique production house called Gorylah Pictures. True to its name, it will specialize in producing gory Asian pictures in the horror and fantasy genre.

The first movie to roll out from Gorylah is an Indonesian gorefest called Darah (Macabre). Directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel (fashionably calling themselves the Mo brothers), it tells a conventional tale about a group of friends who decide to have dinner at a stranger’s house. One by one, they pass out – only to wake up and find themselves bound, gagged and waiting to be slaughtered by the hosts.

Darah stars young, good-looking actors, models and MTV VJs, and stands out from other Indonesian exports with its high production values and extreme gruesomeness. But even these pluses can’t save Darah from ultimately being a formulaic gorefest with not much originality. There’s nothing here that hasn’t already been done in Hollywood movies like Friday the 13th and Halloween.

The producers have tried to sell the film as something “that’s never been made before… in Indonesia”. But hip movie buffs who’ve seen it all may require a stronger selling point than that.