More creepy goodness from Indonesia, this time out your Favorite Catgirl has for you “Pintu Terlarang” aka “The Forbidden Door” by Indonesian director Joko Anwar who also did the quirky neo film-noir/ horror/ hard boiled detective mash up “Kala” aka “Dead Time” back in 2007. Having seen that one, I was struck by it’s oddness and great sense of imagery….. and I can tell you he’s back in fine form with this one as well.
Our synopsis goes: “The life of a successful sculptor (played by Fachri Albar) is turned upside down when he begins receiving mysterious messages from somebody who’s asking for his help.
When he stumbles upon an illegal TV broadcast which offers snuff, he finds out that the person who’s trying to reach him is a 7 year-old boy who has been kept and abused by a vicious couple. As he digs more, he discovers that his wife (played by Marsha Timothy) just might be connected to the whole mystery. Soon he has to decide whether or not to abandon his search and leave the boy to die or to lose everything and everyone he knows.”
This one is definitely strange…. and that’s something coming from this movie lovin’ girl…. Given my tastes in movies, I’ve certainly seen some strange films over the years, but very few that take the idea of such deliberate quirkiness and make it their own.
So what’s the story on this one? Well… by now you know it’s time to “Read On”… so let’s get to it!!
If you’ve been lucky enough to encounter director Joko Anwar’s earlier film, “Kala”, then you already know he has a very unique vision that he imbues his films with….. Just when you think you are watching one type of film he often changes gears on you… takes his film in an entirely different direction and then ends up someplace odd and nowhere where you thought it might go. His films share an equal measure of the gritty feeling of old film-noir films with elements of the sort of suspense and plot bits of classic Hitchcock movies bundled together with some of the downright weird imagery of David Lynch and a little of the psychological notions of David Cronenberg’s work. Wrap it all in with a soundtrack dominated by cool 50’s style jazz and a very distinctly Indonesian feeling story and you got one very different sort of movie….. Oh yes, indeed…
We start this one out by getting a quick introduction to the main character Gambir (played by Fachri Albar), a successful sculptor whose recent series of works featuring pregnant women has become all the rage in the local art scene. He’s seemingly got it all…. a successful career, his sexy, super smart, yet loving wife Talyda (played by Marsha Timothy), and is the envy of all his close friends and acquaintances. What more could a man want from life? But…. first appearances can be deceiving…. and therein lies our story.
Gambir, you see, is being haunted….. both by a secret guilt about the secret abortion of he and Talyda’s first baby, and by a strange recurring message that seems meant especially for him and that follows him everywhere…. “Help Me!!”…. Are these things really connected? Well…. it seems Gambir and Talyda made the big mistake of getting intimate a wee bit too early in their relationship, and no quick marriage would ever fool anyone into believing they hadn’t had sex before marriage….. and we all know how much that’s a no-no in Indonesia…. Sure it was easy to arrange a secret abortion, but Talyda loses it and the only way for Gambir to calm her down is to promise to hide the fetus inside one of his statues. Naturally, doing that somehow makes the statue soooo much better so pretty soon Gambir is forced to buy more aborted babies from the clinic to fill all his statues and give them that certain “something” too…… Ewwwwhhh!!! 
Yep, it’s a pretty gross notion, and this had me thinking we were headed for the Indonesian equivalent of the “pontinak” legend going on here. You know…. where keeping the ghosts of unborn children brings good luck and wealth to the person who controls them…. (Nope, that’s certainly a neat idea, but that’s just toooo easy for this film…. and I wasted a lot of time on this idea while things got even stranger…)
The messages…. they beg… they plead…. and poor Gambir finds them absolutely everywhere…. Couple this with the stress of keeping his mom at bay while she constantly plots and schemes to find some way for him and Talyda to finally overcome “his” little problem and have a child…. Grrrr!!! So annoying!! If only he could tell her it’s actually the result of the abortion, but nope… 
Gambir can’t do that of course…. Sigh. Then the film throws yet another weird curve at us. He decides that the whole business of making the same statues over and over…. and the loathsome secret within each and every one of them is just too much to bear any longer. He tells his “friend” and owner of the gallery that sells his stuff that his new show will go an entirely different direction only to have “Uncle” Jimmy tell him he accidentally broke one of the statues…. and he knows the secret too. Worse… he makes a thinly veiled threat to expose Gambir unless he keeps right on making those statues…. and keeps making him the money they bring in. Think that’s bad enough? Then it gets worse….
While working in his basement studio, a tool he throws away in anger rolls under a cabinet and when he moves it, he finds a strange door…. completely unknown to him and locked with a formidable padlock. How could such a thing exist in a brand new house built especially for him by his wife’s father? More importantly…. what does it hide? Before he can break in and find out, Talyda arrives…. begging him never to open that door or ask her what she has locked away inside. He’s confused and a bit frightened, but he loves her and ultimately agrees to never open the door or ever ask her about it again….. so long as she lives. Now you know this can’t be good……
As if poor Gambir doesn’t have enough misery on his plate to deal with… the pleading messages continue. Eventually they lead him to a mysterious club somewhere in a wealthy section of Jakarta that Gambir figures is the front for the human trafficking ring that must have snatched the boy he keeps seeing in his hallucinations and dreams. He can’t get in… until he finds out his best friend is a secret member of the club, and after beating his friend up a bit gets him to sponsor Gambir for membership…. He then discovers the club itself is actually a place where the bored and the wealthy can sate their sick, voyeuristic need to see the underside of life by watching secret cameras hidden about the city. Hidden everywhere, they show everything from deviant sex, prison rape, an insane woman who spends her days sewing her hand to a blanket, and finally….. a young boy who is slowly being beaten to death by his mother and father in a seedy apartment. It’s the boy who Gambir knows has been sending those messages…. and he grows more and more frantically desperate to find him and save him before it’s too late.
But before you think that’s all this one has to throw at us… it’s time for me to give you my “SPOILER ALERT”…. ’cause this one is still got some crazy stuff coming, and trust me, you might definitely want to see it for yourself.
The story spirals down and down….. and just when you think Gambir is going to redeem himself and save the boy…. well…. ummm… he doesn’t. Nope…. instead he gets to watch the TV at the club helplessly as the boy finally cracks and takes a big ol’ kitchen knife one night to slit the throats of both his tormentors and then to himself in a single act of self destructive misery in the face of a seemingly uncaring world. So that’s it….. right? Wrong.
While weeping and broken over the boys death, Gambir sees the program on the floor, listing all the channels available to members at the club, and to his horror, one of those channels has his wife name listed!! Almost in shock he can’t not turn to that channel…. only to see his very own house and his mother and wife discussing how Talyda is going to have to seduce both his best friends if she’s ever going to conceive a child….. and then the footage of both those illicit adulteries. Gambir snaps….. and then goes cold as he decides to end his pain in the only way possible left to him.
So he plans a festive Christmas dinner….. for himself and Talyda, his mother, “Uncle Jimmy” and both his “dear” friends….. a dinner they’ll never…. ever… forget. Add a revolver…. a big ol’ carving knife, and enough paralytic poison to keep all his victims awake but unable to move a muscle and Gambir is set to finally dish out some just deserts to his loved ones. We get enough gooey arterial spray to fill two Indonesian films here….. and then, lest we forget…. we get to see what’s hidden in back of that door in the basement…..
Time for one last crazy shift…… seems that the door is to that seedy apartment, where the little boy and his parents lie dead in pools of blood. Say what?? Not only that…. but the boy’s mother, whose face has always been conveniently just out of frame throughout…. is that of his very own mother!!! Huh?!? The world spinning insanely around him, Gambir is finally revealed to be locked within the padded room of an asylum….. having been that very same little boy who murdered his parents as a child, and who has been trapped within the hell of his own mind ever since…. All the characters are just people from the asylum….. warped and trapped in the same hallucinations that constantly run again and again through his shattered psyche. Or….. has he? A final scene shows a man entering a church to give confession…. he’s killed his wife you see…. and the priest that takes that confession? Why it’s Gambir…. who sends the man home with the stern warning never to open the “secret door”…….
Hmmmm…. yep, now this one certainly kept me guessing…. and it’s filled with lots and lots of things that just keep percolating through your head. Neko liked this one…. and for an Indonesian film, it’s most certainly a class act, with good acting, excellent cinematography, script and direction. The Indonesian “Special Edition DVD” comes with lots of extras on board and has excellent English subtitles as well. So….. if quirky films are your thing, and you like something that’s going to stay with you long after the credits have rolled, then “Pintu Terlarang” might just be for you. I give this one a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5…. with plenty of purrs of contentment for the odd little touches here and there throughout and the downright unique style it possesses. If you haven’t seen this one yet…. go for it. (Psssst!! If you reeeaally like it…. then by all means go ahead and hunt down a copy of “Kala” as well….. you won’t be sorry!)
Yep… we’ve got a Trailer… and here it is!
Nekoneko's Movie Litterbox 
Entertaining review of an intriguing film. Now, could you please, please tell me where I can find a copy of this and his other film? Thank you!
Also, do you know if the Indonesian dvd is uncut? I just read the director’s blog, and he says the censorship board demanded several cuts. But may only have been for the cinema release.
Happy to have another Gentle Visitor chime in!
Joko Anwar is one of the most interesting directors in Indonesian cinema and both this one and his earlier “Kala” aka “Dead Time” are readily available in Indonesia itself. If you are located elsewhere, like this lil’ Catgirl, then your best bet to grab a copy would be either Sensasian.com out of Malaysia or from Yesasia Global which had “Pintu Terlarang” listed as being available last I knew.
Ebay and Amazon marketplace are good ideas to check as well, sometimes they’ll have some surprising finds when all else has failed. Hope this helps!
I hadn’t heard about the censorship boards cuts, and I’m not certain if the Indonesian disc is edited…. but I didn’t notice any appreciable problems with it, normally those sorts of edits stick out like a sore thumb for me to notice.
I found one of his previous films, Joni’s promise, on sensasian, a supplier I’ve already used a number of times. So I’ll most certainly be ordering this one very soon. 😀 Kala seems to be trickier though, but that is exactly how it should be. The thrill of the hunt, the adrenalin-filled tracking down of rarer, more exotic films. With more and more genres going mainstream,there is almost no hidden, esoteric pleasures left to pursue. I’m an ardent horror fan, but these days you can find virtually any gory, previously banned gem at your local blockbuster. Infinitely frustrating! I miss the 80s and 90s, when youhad to actually look hard for something.:D
Will check yesasia too, although I rarely use them. There are cheaper alternatives.
You’ll find the censorship info for Forbidden here:
http://blog.pintuterlarang.com/
I already sent the director an email asking about an uncut release.
Kind regard,
JHH
NORWAY
PS! Your taste in cinema is truly impeccable & your reviews are immensely entertaining§
PPS! You also reviewed the Indonesian horror film MACABRE? didn’t you? Do you know if the Indonesian dvd is longer than the cut Singapore release? Very unlikely, aye? Guess I’ll have to wait for a US or German dvd.
Hehehe…. I’ve not had the chance to see the Indonesian release for “Macabre” as the Indonesian censorship board made things difficult for the DVD release by forcing the last minute re-editing of it before they’d OK the sale of it in Indonesia. I’m told the cuts are minor… mostly 1 second trims here and there to satisfy requirements under release guidelines for their domestic DVD market. Hopefully I’ll encounter it soon and get a copy for comparison.
The Singapore release is edited, unfortunately… but I’m given to understand that the cuts were less extreme than those made in Indonesia. One used to be able to get Singapore DVD’s rather reliably from Moviexclusive out of Singapore itself, priced in US dollars but recently their e-store has gone missing and I’m afraid they are out of business. A shame, as they were a good source for Asian films (especially Thai ones) that missed being subtitled in English elsewhere.
I’m glad you enjoy my reviews, and here’s to hoping you’ll find more reasons to drop by and chat in future!
For some reason your page seemed to be down. I was trying to access it all morning, without any success.
Yes, it truly is a pity about moviexclusives. Bought Colic, among others, from them some time ago, but found the estore to be gone when I tried last time. A shame! Well, you can always use hkflix.com.They have quite a few Singapore dvds and have excellet service. Also, I luckily have a persoal contact in Singapore that can get me stuff. He sent me some excellent tin boxes of quite a few Gihbli films {Ponyo, Kiki etc}.Amazing quality and very collectible!
Btw, you can try this retailer for Indonesian dvds: http://www.esindo.com. They have Macabre and a lot more! Situated in the US, apparently.
Also, there’s http://www.cinemashops.com in Malaysia. I order rare Barry Prima and Indo horror vcds there.
Now, if they would only hurry up and release MACABRE uncut!
PS! Found this: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/02/05/99434.html
Interesting read! Censorship, so very civilized and modern.
Noticed that you already know ESINDO; Obviously! 😀
By the way, can you please recommend some good Idonesian and Malay {horror} films? The highlights, the great or above average ones? I mean,why wade through an ocean of mediocre ghost stories, when you have already done that? 😀
Sorry about the downtime… it even caught me unawares earlier today…. not certain what was up but I’m certain our “tech gnomes” at Delirium were all over things as I see we’re back up and at it again.
Ahhhh! I almost forgot about esindo. They had both “Pintu Terlarang” as well as “Kala” last I remember…. They were down for a time and I thought they had gone out of business as well. Nice to see they are still available as a source! Their service wasn’t bad and prices were good… especially if you are located in the US. I seem to remember they even shipped internationally too, although I’m not certain how the prices were for that.
Hmmmm? Where to start for Indonesian film? I’d have to say you could do worse than to give “Kuntilanak” a try… one of my favorites, and a nice look at a little known folklore monster (at least little known outside Indonesia itself…) There are two sequels to that one, but neither one measures up to the original unfortunately. I liked “Mati Suri” as well… and the first “Suster Ngesot”. In Malay film, try “Chermin” and “Santau”…. well worth a look for some nice story and unusual local folklore.
I finally read your review 🙂
Full of spoiler my kitty friend 😉
I have finished my own review, it’s still on scheduled tho. It is a lot better, or I may say easier to understand once you have read the book. It’s interesting how Anwar turn it from book to movie. My review is far different from yours because I give more comparison than more about the movie itself. So I link it here for a more movie oriented review 😉
Hahaha!! I do indeed tend to do that unfortunately…. but I write my reviews that way because when I look for a foreign film on DVD I like to learn all about it first… even detailed story elements… to know if I will like it enough to risk buying it. I want people who find my reviews to be able to make that decision easily too. 😉
Hmmmm? I can’t see your link… but no problem, I can fix that!!
Read Novia’s book review for “Pintu Teralang” HERE!! 😉
hehe that’s why I only buy DVD by my fav actors because I dont want to risk it 😉
I link your review to my movie review, not my book review. It might give a pingback later. Your review has more details than mine and hope it will help other to understand the movie.
Awesome film loved it!
Found a DVD with English subtitles of this movie for anyone who wants to see it!
Yep, an excellent lil’ film, it makes me wish more people outside of Indonesia were aware of Joko Anwar. Can’t wait to get a look at his latest, “Modus Anomali”. Canadian distributor Raven Banner Entertainment has acquired the International rights to it, so I’m crossing my fingers for a domestic US DVD soon!
So interesting. Please help me find a way to buy it. I have looked online and have not had any luck. Please help me.
This one’s been out for a while, and Indonesian DVD’s tend to get released and then just up and disappear after that initial release. If I were you I’d look on eBay to see if it might be floating out there somewheres.
Failing that, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on Youtube either if giving it a watch is all you really want. Me… I always prefer the DVD…. 🙂