Saturday April 18, 2009
A spirited comedy
Review by ALLAN KOAY
There are two types of horror movies — those that make your skin crawl, and those that have you rolling on the floor clutching your stomach, as Jangan Tegur does.
Maybe something happened while I was sleeping, but the colour blue seems to be all the rage at the movies these days.
First, there was Ju-On’s blue boy of horror. Then came the blue exhibitionist and sometimes superhero Dr Manhattan of Watchmen. And now, we have our own Julia Ziegler literally turning blue in the face in Jangan Tegur, the latest horror offering from the healthy and wealthy Metrowealth.
In one climactic scene, Ziegler’s character, Natasya, gets possessed, and when she appeared on a bed looking as blue as a smurf, the audience I watched the movie with burst out in laughter. Then when she started flicking her tongue around, she almost brought the house down.
Horror movies can be separated into two groups — those that give a good scare, and those that you watch for a good guffaw to chase the blues (sorry!) away.
Most Malaysian horror movies fall effortlessly into the latter category. Perhaps the greatest example is Possessed, which had a hilarious breakdancing sequence and a storyline that felt like it was written by the Farrelly Brothers.
But the king of unintentionally funny horror must be Metrowealth, which has churned out gem after gem in the last few years. Jangan Pandang Belakang was a laugh-out-loud movie with ghosts that struck Superman poses and parted their hair to reveal supposedly horrific faces. Congkak was John Boorman’s Deliverance re-imagined as a floating-wife spectacle. And it gave us perhaps the most brilliant line of any movie of any language — Isteri saya dah terapung!.
I suspect Metrowealth has the tag-team of Pierre Andre and Ahmad Idham to thank for this most fruitful creative streak.
Pierre, from being a mere screenwriter and ideas man, has blossomed into an actor-scripter-screenplay writer-director super-combo. And Ahmad, for this movie, has taken on the important-sounding role of director’s advisor. Together they have made yet another winner that couldn’t have strayed further from its intended purpose of scaring the daylight out of us.
Jangan Tegur will have you in stitches from the get-go. Its opening moments has a girl named Baizura (Nadia Mustafar) returning to her village to pay her last respects to grandma.
Things get a bit tricky, however, because grandma refuses to stay still, even though she’s dead as a doornail.
First, she refuses to have her face covered. Then she sits up. Later, she’s on the floor of the bedroom. Then she gets on the bed. This is a truly inspired sequence; actually it must have been inspired by Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, about a corpse that refuses to stay put and appears everywhere, to everyone’s chagrin.
Just when we think Baizura’s story is the main focus, the movie takes a sudden turn after she disappears, and we are introduced to Kamal (Pierre), whose wife Natasya (Julia) has just come out of a coma after an accident.
She starts to have bad dreams about the mysterious Baizura. And she starts to see a J-horror-inspired long-haired spectre everywhere she goes. And so Natasya begins to have pointless conversations with her husband, as characters in M-horror (Malaysian horror; don’t thank me all at once) are wont to do.
Husband then has pointless conversations with her super-sexy doctor (Rozita Che Wan). Hot-looking doctor gives pointless advice — wife has been living in a fantasy world while in coma, so it takes time for her to get out of it. And, oh, seeing things is normal for patients like her.
Or so the hot physician says.
After that, life becomes a series of ghostly sightings, jump scares, cheap shocks, loud sounds, more pointless conversations, and sombre consultations with a religious man, as Natasya tries to get to the bottom of things.
What’s the connection between Natasya and Baizura?
There’s a surprise waiting at the end, of course, but the bigger surprise is really that Kamal never once thinks of taking his wife to the hospital for further examination. I’d sure like to see that sexy doctor again, but that’s beside the point.
And what’s a Metrowealth horror without some possession and exorcism, eh?
The film dutifully climaxes with Natasya getting possessed and turning into a female version of Dr Manhattan, but with clothes on (sigh). And here, Pierre pays yet another homage, this time to The Exorcist, by having an elderly ustaz and a young ustaz doing battle with the demon.
But if you’re expecting pea-soup vomit and blasphemous swearing, you’re in for a disappointment. The only thing that the possessed Natasya does is flick her tongue at the ustaz and say mildly suggestive things like, “I’ll give you everything.”
Even when possessed, Malaysians are mindful of social etiquette and censorship do’s and don’ts...
Make no mistake, though. Jangan Tegur is a movie that should only be watched with a participatory crowd. It’s only fun when you have collective laughter and smart alecks trying to outdo the movie’s super-loud sound effects.
With a crowd like that, you’d easily forgive Jangan Tegur for being a terrible, terrible movie.
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