Kliwon Friday Night (Blu-ray Review)
Kliwon Friday Night is my least favorite in the Suzzanna box set from Severin Films. There’s a lot of relentless noise and chaos that fails to translate for entertainment. The supernatural elements are surprisingly sparse, which the narrative stumbles through, shockingly. stumbling through its supernatural nonsense with such awkward confidence that it becomes more exhausting than frightening.
Kliwon Friday Night is part of the Suzzanna: Empress of Darkness 3-Disc Blu-ray Box Set from Severin Films
Film ★☆☆☆☆
Directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra and starring Suzzanna, this 1986 Indonesian horror film has elements that should make for a fun supernatural romp, things like black magic, screaming ghosts, haunted paintings, levitations, and severed heads, but it just doesn’t have the concern for tone, pacing, or coherence that the other films in the set have. In fact, after watching this one, I feel like I may have been too hard on the previous films.
Perhaps I need to return to them and up the stars.
Suzzanna is Ayu, a novelist who stays at a supposedly haunted vacation house occupied by the vengeful Sundelbolong spirit, but the setup collapses into a barrage of disconnected scenes and bizarre detours that feel like filmmakers making up random plot developments on the spot.
There’s an infamous sequence involving a dwarf, a drag queen, and an impromptu musical number that arrives out of nowhere and disappears just as abruptly, perfectly summarizing how hopelessly directionless the entire production feels.
Kliwon Friday Night behaves as though absurdity excuses the terrible filmmaking. The script is incoherent, character motivations barely exist, and the dialogue often sounds like random exposition stitched together between screams and ghost attacks.
I enjoyed what little special effects the film has to offer, which are grotesque, with the Sundelbolong’s “hole in the back” makeup, but there’s a sense of joy that’s lacking from the previous films in the set.
Suzzanna is great as usual, which is about the only aspect that makes Kliwon Friday Night watchable.
Video ★★★☆☆
Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Clarity/Detail: Severin Films’ new presentation pulls an impressive amount of texture from. Ghostly close-ups are detailed and goofy, skin textures expose every tired wrinkle, sweat bead, and corpse-like complexion with precision. The naturally filmic grain structure remains stable and organic throughout.
Depth: Movements are decently cinematic in their nature with little blurring or jitter.
Black Levels: Blacks are good enough, you’ll notice some crushing every now and then, including the insane opening scene.
Color Reproduction: Colors come across bold and strong.
Flesh Tones: Skin tones are natural and do hold a consistent appearance throughout.
Noise/Artifacts: There’s noise and compression every now and then, but it’s just a result of the source material, not Severin.
Audio ★★★☆☆
Audio Format(s): Indonesian DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono
Subtitles: English
Dynamics: The mono track provide a solid performance here. It’s rather loose and well balanced between the score, sound effects and vocals. Consider it a massive win, given what the budget and limitations the film had.
Height: N/A
Low Frequency Extension: Understandably, bass response remains faint.
Surround Sound Presentation: N/A
Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue is loud, crisp and clear.
Extras ★★★☆☆
Hantu Retribution: Female Ghosts Of The Malay Archipelago – Interview With Filmmaker Katrina Irawati Graham And Dr. Rosalind Galt, Author Of Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak And Cinemas Of Decolonization: This 30 minute featurette really delves into the politics and cinematic history of Hantu, providing clips of various films. There’s a lot of information provided here, and it gives a lot of context to the films in the set. I’d recommend a newcomer to watch this first, actually.
Summary ★★☆☆☆
In a set with a bunch of fun, inventive films, Kliwon Friday Night stands out as the one entry I just didn’t vibe with. However, there’s a fantastic 30 minute feature that’s included.
