Horror films are each an exercise, in some way or another, in the controlled build-up and release of tension. This means a lot of things, but for our purposes today, it means that a great many films in the genre are absolutely front-loaded with potential energy. You need the right tone, the right concept, the right characters, and the right scares, because you don’t want us to tune out.
This is basically universally true of any halfway competent horror movie, but unfortunately for many, potential energy is most, if not all, of the energy they can muster. There is loads of potential energy in sMOTHERed, the new Shudder original from directors Kevin Rahardjo and Rafki Hidayat, and it translates to something compelling early on. Sadly, all that potential never quite manifests into anything more, leaving us with a half-baked film that, decent squares aside, squanders all the goodwill it builds in the setup.
And the setup really is quite compelling. Alif (Rio Dewanto) is a Jakarta-based artist who, after a serious car accident, is struggling with partial amnesia brought on by head trauma. His wife Nadine (Faradina Mufti) and son Emir (Jordan Omar) are supportive when he comes home from the hospital, even as he reveals he doesn’t necessarily remember the issues rumbling beneath his marriage before the accident. Before he has time to truly reacclimate, though, Alif gets a long-awaited visit from his mother, Aminah (Vonny Anggraini). Mother and son haven’t seen each other since Alife left home to seek his fortune as a teenager, and she’s never met her daughter-in-law or her grandson.
So, when she arrives, Aminah dives into her grandmotherly duties, brightening the family home even as Alif is plagued by nosebleeds, strange visions, and bits of his pre-accident life he still can’t explain. Perhaps it’s the memory loss, or perhaps it’s Aminah herself, but the more he digs in search of the truth, the more Alif starts to wonder if the woman in his house is actually his mother.
There’s a lot of talent here, including Indonesian horror legend Joko Anwar (Impetigore, Satan’s Slaves) co-writing and producing. Throw in the film’s roots in an Indonesian folk tale, and it feels like we’re on the way to some stirring psychological drama with a little folk-horror mixed in. For the first half of the film, that’s exactly what we get. Rahardjo and Hidayat prove adept at composing shots (though the lighting often looks a bit flat) and, more importantly, at working with their cast, exacting tremendous emotional detail out of early scenes.
This is the story of a man whose entire recent life, and chunks of his distant past, has become a mystery to him, and so it’s a detective story even as it’s a surprisingly emotional tale of a man trying to reconnect, trying to be better than his former self as a husband, father, and son. Dewanto brings a ton of depth to this side of the story, as Alif’s visions and complaints of strange voices intensify, he never fails to keep us caring about this wounded man desperate to heal.
It’s what happens next, after setting this remarkable emotional baseline, that starts to fragment the film, spinning it out into certain directions that are promising, and others that feel like duds. The more convinced he becomes that something in his life is not quite right, and the deeper he digs, the more the film threatens to topple its delicate human balance. For a brief handful of scenes, the film seems to forget its original tone entirely, branching off into a small-time crime film, which would feel more like an organic evolution if it didn’t then wildly swing in a different direction again.
Characters in the ensemble fade out, and the emotional tension they bring fades with them, until by the time the film builds to its big reveal about the secrets Alif has kept, it feels both underdeveloped and overdue. At 99 minutes, sMOTHERed still feels like multiple movies smashed together in the edit, leaving its back half littered with dead ends and stalls, which diminish its emotional returns. That said, there are some creepy little moments still lingering in there, so the film doesn’t entirely lose its sense of atmosphere.
This is made all the more frustrating in the case of sMOTHERed because, in the build-up to this derailment, we saw just how well everything was working. The cast has great chemistry, the dynamic between characters is complex and believable, and the emotional hooks of the film are firmly embedded.
Then it all just breaks down, piece by piece, leaving us with a classic case of potential energy squandered in a film’s back half. Still, that potential is pretty impressive, and I’ll be very interested to see what these filmmakers come up with next.
sMOTHERed premieres May 29 on Shudder.
