Siksa Kubur

I saw this pop up on someone else's feed, looked into it, and thought it sounded like an interesting starting point for a horror movie. Siksa Kubar, or Punishment of the Grave, is a concept in the Islamic religion (and a version of it exists in Judiasm) that the grave itself is a spiritual purgatory of sorts; until Judgment Day, the souls of the righteous will find the grave peaceful and blessed, while those who have sinned and not repented, or those who do not believe, will be tortured, their physical body caught in a cycle of torment, destruction, and reconstruction. Grave Torture is all about a brother, Adil, and sister, Sita, whose parents are killed in a suicide bombing. The bomber, terrified of the torture that potentially awaits him in the grave, believes dying a martyr for his religion will help him avoid Siksa Kubar. Sita is so angered by her parents being killed over religion, she spends her life dedicated to disproving Siksa Kubar exists. As I said, the idea is a solid backbone for a movie. I'm sure you can already think of some ways this could be used for a horror movie. I had hopes. Not high hopes -- I wasn't about to talk myself into the trap of unreachable expectations -- but I did expect it use the themes of obsession, and faith and what makes some have it and some lack it, along with the idea of grave torture itself to build a compelling narrative. That is not what I got. Grave Torture squandered the potential I thought it had in a number of ways. After a promising and heart-rending start of when Sita and Adil are kids, there's a time jump to their adult lives. The movie has to now get everyone caught up with where Sita and Adil are and what they're doing, and build towards the circumstances that will allow Sita to fulfill her quest to disprove grave torture and, thus, tear down religion as a whole. This takes what feels like an eternity, and it's spent with Sita, who is bitter and cold, and occasionally Adil, who is meek and cowardly. There is no one for the audience to latch on to here, and Sita's quest feels like a zero-sum game. Proving grave torture doesn't exist won't dismantle a religion dating back thousands of years, and finding out it's real will just render the sole purpose of her life a waste of time. When the movie finally has the pieces in place and she has spent the night in a grave with a corpse and nothing happened, the movie is only half over. Okay, what's left? Side plots. Meandering side plots. An argument with her brother about the purpose of her quest. Getting on TV, but things falling apart. A fellow nurse at the nursing home Sita works at having an affair with one of the residents, and how that leads to a death of one of the residents. And laced through it all, some spookums and jump scares straight out of a mid-00's J-horror American remake. It all feels so recycled and uninteresting, and worst of all, tangential to the story of Sita's obsession. Yes, it all does tie back in its own way, I guess, but the problem isn't that it isn't related; it's that it doesn't advance the main point of the movie. It doesn't further Sita's crusade or dispel it; it doesn't contribute or detract. It just fills time until the ending. Speaking of, and this is your ***SPOILER WARNING***, guess what filmmaking trope I loathe with the passion of a thousand supernova stars makes an appearance here? If you've read my reviews before, you know what it is. That's right, IT WAS ALL A DREAM. Now, I will give the movie credit for not making the entire run time a dream; only about an hour's worth of movie. But since that's most of the middle of the movie, and the movie doesn't even try to hide the set-up for it, it makes the whole thing a waste of time. It shows no respect for the viewer. Worse yet, the way the movie frames what happens next -- confirming grave torture is real and worse than expected -- comes off as a big finger-wagging at Sita for daring to question religion. Movies like The Exorcist used questioning faith not as a means to punish a character, but to explore humanity and the horror of the situation. Father Merrin's faith in God is restored in the final moments, and his self-sacrifice isn't portrayed as a punishment for his sin, but as a man of God, and God itself, protecting one person and redeeming another. Grave Torture's ending redeems no one, it protects no one, and it saves no one; it punishes Sita for having the impudence to question. The Exorcist, in a roundabout way, gives positive reasons to have faith, showing that through faith, great evil can be conquered, and the weak can show bottomless strength; Grave Torture makes the concept of faith into a threat. Have it or suffer eternal damnation. That's not faith, that's fear. This triple-whammy -- a story that spins its wheels, an insulting invalidation of half the movie's length with a terrible trope, and a cruel morality -- sink Grave Torture for me. While the opening act is strong, and the two ladies who play Sita -- Widuri Puteri who plays the younger version of her, and Faradina Mufti as the adult version -- stand out, its in service of a movie that only wants to use its premise as a springboard for lazy screenwriting, a reliance on two decades-old genre cliches, and shaming its audience if it ever so much has an inkling of spiritual doubt. Being bored, insulted, and lectured for two hours is not my idea of a good time.