Editorials
‘Srigala’ – The 1981 Indonesian ‘Friday the 13th’ Ripoff You’ve Probably Never Seen
The 1981 Indonesian movie Srigala is by no means known by the masses, but those in the loop about vintage and obscure Southeast Asian horror are aware of its existence for one reason. The director of the original Satan’s Slaves, once a steady provider of Indonesia’s homegrown horrors, joined the legion of eager filmmakers who set out to make their own slasher after watching the first Friday the 13th. However, Sisworo Gautama Putra did more than just borrow a concept — he lifted an entire ending.
Before Srigala (or “Wolf” in English) gets on with some of the most blatant copycatting in horror, Putra delivers a different movie for the first fifty minutes. The opening kill shows an unsuspecting scuba diver being gutted by an unseen assailant once he comes up to examine the small trinket he plucked from a large lake. Later, three fortune hunters arrive at the same doomed location, searching for treasure on the lake bottom.
Caroko (S. Parya) and his two assistants, Tom and Johan (Barry Prima, Rudy Salam), receive unexpected company at Situ Angsana; Nina, Hesty and Pono (Lydia Kandou, Siska Widowati, Dorman Borisman) have all come to camp in the nearby forest. Not wanting these strangers to interfere with their mission, Caroko tries to scare the three away with tales of demons and ghosts. The women, however, opt to stay after catching an eyeful of Tom and Johan.
Srigala doesn’t have much in the way of horror during these first two acts. The two groups have a stalker on their hands, yes, but no real harm comes to the main characters until later. The only tangible threat shown early on is the antagonist menacing the treasure hunters with a speedboat. A lengthy and rather intense chase on the lake results in an instant explosion once the villain’s vessel touches dry land. Weirdly, though, the characters go on as if the boat incident never even happened.
The following scene feels like the director needed to pad the runtime. At the others’ campsite, the women exchange blows after Nina suggests to Hesty that she shouldn’t be so trustful of Johan. Maybe Putra thought his movie was getting too serious at this point. Otherwise, why would he insert this random catfight? Nina and Hesty turn out to be well-versed in the martial arts, seeing as they kick, punch and strike one another with moves straight out of a classic Hong Kong actioner. Pono continues to be the movie’s comic relief when he uses his crotch to stop the violence. This whole moment is as ridiculous as it is unnecessary, but it also provides the biggest guffaw in Srigala.
Friday the 13th isn’t the only horror movie from the Western hemisphere to inspire Srigala; another of Nina’s scenes owes itself to ‘70s Italian horror. As Nina struggles to fall asleep during a thunderstorm, several zombies rise from the nearby lake. This is, of course, after the hunters previously mistook a coffin, one packed with a rotting corpse, for sunken treasure. Well, these lurching zombies head straight for Nina’s campsite, where they proceed to menace her in the rain-drenched forest. This all turns out to be a nightmare, blurring the movie’s line between reality and fantasy even further. As for the movie’s Italian inspirations, the undead may just be men whose faces were smeared in green goo, but they were likely fashioned (albeit poorly) after Lucio Fulci’s brand of zombies. Meanwhile, the tent scenes bathed in red lighting and the sinister weather had to have been influenced by Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
The time eventually comes for the movie to live up to its legacy. The disguised driver from the speedboat chase begins to bump off the core characters before there’s only one person left standing. And since Putra all but copied the denouement from Victor Miller’s script, the fact that the killer is a woman shouldn’t be surprising. Yet how she figures into the story is the one glaring difference between her and Pamela Voorhees. While Mrs. Voorhees was avenging her drowned son in Friday the 13th, the murderer here was acting out of greed and pure self-interest.
It’s fascinating how far Putra went to replicate the iconic conclusion of Friday the 13th. Apart from a few significant changes — most of all, there’s no cathartic beheading to speak of — the filmmaker simulated Mrs. Voorhees’ massacre as much as possible. Does he pull it off? Almost. As for the legendary boat scene, Srigala can’t withstand the urge to do its own jump-scare. Dream sequence or not, though, it makes little narrative sense for a zombie to suddenly pop out of the lake at the end. But for the sake of a cheap thrill? Sure, why not.
If not for its flagrant scene theft, Srigala would have, in all likelihood, been forgotten or left undiscovered outside of its homeland. Anyone expecting a Friday the 13th remake will be disappointed, seeing as the “creative” poaching is tucked away in the movie’s back end. It’s the original parts before then that drag the whole picture down. Nevertheless, the appeal of something as strange as Srigala is hard to resist.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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