Grave Torture (2024) Review: Joko Anwar’s Religious Horror is an Intriguing, Though Uneven Slow Burn

Grave Torture (originally titled Siksa Kubur in Indonesia) marks the return of Joko Anwar calling the shots as a director, two years after he made Pengabdi Setan 2: Communion. The movie opens promisingly with the first 10 minutes focusing on an ordinary day as we follow the family — husband and wife (Fachri Aibar, Happy Salma) and their young children, Sita (Widuri Puteri) and Adil (Muzakki Ramdhan) — bakery prepping their freshly baked goods ready for sale. We learn that a U.S.-based doughnut chain nearby has many people heading there since they offer discounts.

Long story short, the bakery scene ends with an unlikely tragedy after Sita and Adil watch their parents killed in a suicide bombing. The suicide bomber (Arfian Arisandy) who visits the bakery earlier has chosen to sacrifice himself in the name of religious fear of grave torture. Credits to Joko Anwar for skillfully pulling off the deliberate build-up, which in turn, kept me intrigued for the rest of the movie. Well, at least for the first half of Grave Torture.

Following the death of their parents, Sita and Adil are sent to a boarding school. Unlike the meek Adil, Sita has become more cynical to the point she starts questioning her faith, particularly when it comes to the act of grave torture. The latter would become her quest to find out whether the grave torture is real or just a hoax meant to incite religious fear.

The story is then transitioned smoothly to Sita and Adil’s adulthood, where the former (Faradina Mufti) is now working as a nurse at a nursing home while the latter (Reza Rahadian) works as a mortician. One of the residents in the nursing home turns out to be Wahyu Sutama (Slamet Rahardjo), who used to own several properties including a boarding school where Sita and Adil studied there before.

From here, Anwar, who also wrote the screenplay, begins to connect the dots. How the past catches up with subsequent reveals and motivations, leading to a shocking moment of violence. The movie may see Anwar get a little verbose with the meaning behind the grave torture as interpreted by one of the characters. But it was a necessary addition to allowing the viewers, particularly the non-Muslims to understand the definition behind the title, as well as from the perspective of Sita’s heavy scepticism towards the aforementioned punishment.

Unfortunately, the second act is where the movie starts to fall apart. Don’t get me wrong, there are some notable scenes such as Sita’s attempt to conduct a test about grave torture by spending the night in the grave beside a wrapped corpse, complete with an infrared camcorder as a potential video proof. A scene involving a front-load washer is worth mentioning too.

And yet, Anwar’s attempt to toy around the viewers with his interpretive storytelling as he delves deeper into Sita’s quest doesn’t work as effectively as I thought it would. He throws in bits and pieces, taking cues from certain genre movies such as Jacob’s Ladder and Insidious while filling his movie with obligatory jump scares. Anwar knows his way around with jump scares as seen in his two Pengabdi Setan movies, making good use of meticulous camerawork, silence and darkness or dimly-lit setting to generate a sense of dread and tension. Only this time, some of the jump scares in Grave Torture feel repetitive while the later introduction of the undead isn’t as scary as it should be.

The movie also grows increasingly muddled revolving around the subplot of a dead boy named Ismail (Daood Saleem), who turns out to be a victim of abuse featured in the first half of the movie and the third act. Ismail is a character trapped in the dark tunnel — a passageway that young Sita and Adil used to brave through while enduring the creepy sound of crying for help and despair echoes in the background. It’s a pity that the subplot is disappointingly glossed over, making me wonder what’s the point of incorporating his character in the first place, only to end up being a mere placeholder.

Speaking of the third act, the movie culminates in the actual grave torture moment. It’s uncompromisingly violent and gory, even though the (intentional?) B-movie vibe somehow takes away the visceral shock, especially given the overall bleak style and tone of Grave Torture.

Grave Torture is currently streaming on Netflix.