SMOTHERED (aka LEGENDA KELAM MALIN KUNDANG, 2025)

New streaming on Shudder from Come and See Pictures, Rapi Films,
Legacy Pictures!
Directed by Rafki Hidayat, Kevin Rahardjo.
Written by Joko Anwar, Aline Djayasukmana, Rafki Hidayat.
Check out the
trailer here!

Rio Dewanto plays Asif a painter who has woken up from a car crash with amnesia.
His wife Nadine (Faradina Mufti) says that before he went into the hospital, he invited Aminah, his mother (Vonny Anggraini) to visit and after hearing about his wreck, she wants to stay with them until he recovers. Emir, Asif’s son (Jordan Omar), is just happy to have his dad back. But something is wrong. Everyone who sees Asif thinks his temperament has changed dramatically. Though he doesn’t recognize his wife, kid, and own mother, even Asif feels something is off, prompting Asif to dig deeper into his own past to find the truth.

I’m a huge fan of Indonesian filmmaker Joko Amwar. So when I saw he was attached to SMOTHERED I was pretty excited. Turns out Anwar only contributed to the script here, which I didn’t know until after watching. It explains a lot as SMOTHERED lacks a lot of the vitality and power many of Anwar’s films pack. This doesn’t make SMOTHERED a bad movie. It just doesn’t feel like a Joko Anwar film.

So while this film lacks the feel of highlighting Indonesian culture, it does have a lot to offer as a psychological thriller. One of the things I love about Anwar’s film is that they center on the differences between religious and cultural differences between Indonesian films and American films. The horrors of history, the oddity of religious rituals, that makes his films stand out.

In SMOTHERED, the film takes a different approach, instead it focuses on how similar we are as humans. SMOTHERED does a deep dive in how a typical dysfunctional family deals with a crisis. The way Asif reacts to his current situation is understandable. He’s forgotten what made him an angry man, so the way he reacts with his wife and son are baffling to them. They only know him as this reclusive, closed off asshole, but with the hurt he has endured all his life forgotten, he’s become a different person. It makes this film a wonderful study of trauma and how it shapes a person.

The acting is superb. Rio Dewanto is fantastic as Asif, a conflicted man who doesn’t know who he is, but continues to find out he doesn’t like who he was. The journey he takes is a harrowing one, full of abuse and deceit. Faradina Mufti is great as Nadine, who seems to be cynically waiting for the other shoe to drop and have her husband turn back into the monster he was. It’s a tense place to be, but she plays it accurately, where you sympathize with her, even though she has not been completely innocent here as well.

As you might have noticed, I haven’t talked about the amazing jump scares, the tactile gore, the moody atmosphere. It’s because there really isn’t a lot of that going on with SMOTHERED. If you’re looking for that, seek out some of Amwar’s other films like IMPETIGORE or QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC or his SATAN’S SLAVES films. This one just isn’t what you usually get when you think about Anwar. It’s a decent drama. There are some harrowing things going on, but this can only barely be described as a horror movie.

Oh and yes, the title of this movie is awful and undercuts the serious nature of this film. Maybe it translates better in Indonesian.