It’s Day 24 of The Kasturi/Files here at Speculative Chic as we continue through the October days of this horror movie extravaganza of chitchat, film discussion, book recs, and cocktail recipes from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files!
Gemma: Well, it had to happen, eventually. Sandra and I appear to have finally found a film on which I’m enthusiastic as, um, hell, while she’s just: “Eh . . . meh.” And that film is May the Devil Take You, which I re-watch for fun — so many times thus far that it’s usually the very first thing Netflix’s “Watch It Again” algorithm throws up for me — but Sandra fell asleep while watching, possibly more than once. Ah well: a gonzo, blood-soaked, barely veiled Indonesian Sam Raimi homage is unlikely to be everybody’s cup of tea, I guess.
Sandra: Well, it’s not that I didn’t like it, per se. It’s more that the film I wanted wasn’t the one I got, which maybe says more about me than anything else. And I guess it says something about me too that amidst all the gore and carnage, I dozed off a few times! Am I jaded? Maybe. May the Devil Take You (Sebelum Iblis Menjemput) is an Indonesian horror film that came out in 2018, directed by Timo Tjahjanto, and is indeed his very clear love letter to Evil Dead, with maybe a dash of Drag Me to Hell thrown in (both of which were directed by Sam Raimi, so . . . yeah, that makes sense).
Gemma: Tjahjanto is probably better known either for his gangster films, like The Night Comes for Us (also on Netflix) and Killers, or for having co-directed the “Safe Haven” sequence of V/H/S 2, along with The Raid: Redemption and Apostle director Gareth Huw Evans. One way or the other, his propensity for over-the-top violence and weird emotional dynamics often make for fun product, IMHO.
Sandra: Oooh, Apostle! I liked that one a lot. Though we watched it with my dad, who I think was quite shocked, so that may have been a mistake. Anyhoodle. Back to Devil. The movie begins with an eerie conjuring scene in which businessman Lesmana Wijaya (Ray Sahetapy) lets a mysterious white-robed woman — later identified as a “priestess of Iblis” or “the devil’s bride” — into his house to perform some arcane ritual. In the basement, she sprinkles white powder, draws symbols in a circle around herself and speaks in a strange guttural voice while holding a black goat’s severed head. You know this shit isn’t going to turn out well! Honestly, I almost gagged when the woman swallows a lock of hair Lesmana gives her, and then feeds some of her own back to him. Ugh! Then she cuts his hand open and sets a briefcase full of cash on fire, which really pisses him off to no end: “Superstitious nonsense!” he sputters (as David Lo Pan might say), turning away, then realizes he’s looking right at another black goat, this one perfectly alive, which trips off happily into the basement’s shadows — and when he turns around again, he discovers that the priestess is now in full levitation mode, floating five feet up above the ground. What does Lesmana want for all this ritual? Money, of course.
Gemma: Yep — yet more money, which immediately begins to fall from the air, refilling the briefcase several times over. Loans from the devil do tend to come due, though.
Sandra: Fast forward to many years later, as we flip handily through news articles showing the rise and fall of Lesmana — who’s now lying in bed suffering from a mysterious illness, covered in boils, kind of like Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch’s Dune. Visited by his estranged daughter Alfie (Chelsea Islan), whose mother supposedly committed suicide, as well as his second wife and her family (including Alfie’s young half-sister), Lesmana goes crazy, jumps out of bed while trying to warn Alfie about something and manages to vomit black bile/goo into the mouths of pretty much everyone else, particularly his stepson’s girlfriend. Many people online were grossed out by this, but of course, fans of Raimi will have seen this kind of thing before. Frankly, the hair-swallowing at the beginning grossed me out more.
Gemma: Hair-swallowing: definitely an acquired taste. That, like most bodily based types of witchcraft, is pretty hard to derail once it gets going!
Part of what I love most about May the Devil Take You is the attention it pays to establishing the toxic dynamics of Alfie’s blended family. We first meet her coming home from some crappy job that requires her to wear a uniform and a nametag; Islan’s a master of the disgusted, exhausted side-eye, which she’s currently practicing on a creepy dude who’s decided a crowded train is exactly the right place to feel up random women’s butts. “Excuse me,” she snarls, bumping past him, and steals his wallet. We can see from her sunburned face and lack of makeup that while Alfie may have been born into wealth, she’s spent the years since her father’s divorce and her mother’s death working hard for the money, as opposed to Lesmana’s second wife Laksmi Surya (Karina Suwandi), a towering, icy, retired film actress who treats every interaction as a scene in her own private soap opera. (“Still acting, I see,” Alfie remarks after Laksmi greets her at the hospital by putting a hand on her shoulder, making a “sympathetic” face that truly must be seen to be not even vaguely believed, and telling her: “Be strong, child.”) While Laksmi’s daughter with Lesmana, Nara, is a perfectly ordinary kid, Alfie’s main antagonist is less Laksmi than her overprotective stepsister Maya (Pevita Pearce), who’s constantly ready to throw down over any perceived insult to her Ma. And then there’s stepbrother Ruben (Samo Rafael), who’s just trying to go along to get along. “Please cut Maya some slack,” he tells Alfie. “Money problems have her feeling insecure, and Mom doesn’t help.” This is a phrase which will come back to haunt all three of them, later on — armchair analysis as fate, especially for those who refuse to accept it.
It occurs to me that another reason I like this film is that you so seldom see actress-Moms in horror. Though at least my own Mom is a good actress.
Sandra: You know, I was liking all the above stuff — the movie had me, still, at that point. I wonder where I lost interest? Hmm. Anyway, it turns out that Lesmana has left his original jungle house (the site of the aforementioned ritual) only to Alfie, which gets right up Laksmi’s haughty nose — so she goes there, hoping to find something of value in the whole dusty, decaying, wallpaper-peeling, moldy, disgusting mess, and is soon joined by all her step-siblings plus her nasty stepmother. Well, obviously things go to hell, because, you know, the DEVIL.
Gemma: Much like in Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves (2017, available on Shudder) or Netflix’s own Munafik 2, the Devil in this case is not actually a Christian one — it’s Iblis or al-Shaitan, a slightly more nebulous figure identified as a fallen angel who refused to support the creation of human beings or prostrate himself before Adam, after which he was punished by becoming a djinn. So, if the Wijaya family weren’t all such a bunch of strictly secular, money-obsessed skeptics, they might at least be able to avail themselves of an imam’s help (not that that always works, either). As it is, however, they’re left to struggle against the terrible forces whose wrath Lesmana incurred by trying — naturally enough — to weasel out of his deal, which are less those of Iblis himself and more those of the priestess, who (it turns out) Lesmana killed after she demanded he also give Iblis the souls of his biological children, Alfie and Nara. I mean, sure . . . he’d already given her the soul of Alfie’s mother, who very definitely did not throw herself off that condo balcony. But his kids? That’s a step too far.
What appears to have happened in the interim is that Lesmana has been going to his old house and practicing his own version of black magic, trapping the part of the priestess’s curse which has to do with Nara and Alfie in a small back room that Ruben accidentally opens while looking for documentation on Lesmana’s hidden assets, releasing it. In a creepy effect, the curse moves outwards like a transparent ripple (or possibly the world’s stinkiest fart), reaching first Nara, then Alfie, then Lesmana himself, accelerating the living decay that put him in hospital in the first place until all his boils explode and the hair he once swallowed erupts from his throat in a big, sticky rope, strangling him to death. This then frees the priestess’s ghost to escape the basement where Lesmana buried her body, first possessing Laksmi’s corpse, then tempting Maya to act on her hatred for Alfie and become the devil’s bride as well. (Pevita Pearce does amazing work, especially during this sequence — the moment where she glimpses Iblis in a side-room of Lesmana’s house, a goat-headed figure slowly twirling around in a long, black robe as he whispers, through Maya’s own mouth: “Maya, will you be my lambkin?” is genuinely horrifying, as is her flirty, feral, barely sane behavior for the rest of the film.)
Sandra: Jesus, did I sleep through half of this movie? Because that shit sounds amazing, and I don’t remember it. I’m going to have to re-watch, I think. Okay, this I did see: people are picked off one by one in a variety of gross ways, all in gleeful fun, until only Alfie and Nara survive, limping out of the house into a not particularly comforting-looking sunrise. It’s kind of fun, but ultimately, at least for me, didn’t have any surprises (maybe because I MISSED A BUNCH OF IT). My favorite part was the opening, with the priestess and her ritual — that was quite creepy and promised a movie that would be more in that vein. Don’t get me wrong — I love me some Sam Raimi, and I’m a big fan of the Cabin-in-the-Woods oeuvre, but parts of May the Devil Take You ended up feeling like a bit of a retread. Well, there’s supposed to be Chapter Two coming out, so we’ll see what happens then.
Also: Stinky Fart Curse is my new band.
Gemma: Hey, I get it. And I’m looking forward to the sequel as well, though for different reasons, given how much I already love this film . . . I’m really not looking for it to make more sense on the next go-’round, because I just want a two-hour return trip to this trope-tastic, completely gonzo fever dream, LSD trip of a universe. I love the way that Tjahjanto essentially slams the DNA of everything he loves most into a cinematic Mixmaster, then turns it on without putting the cap on first and sees what happens next: blood-covered walls, three-foot-long tongues, time-slipping, statues and stuffed tigers starting to scream in the background of slightly out-of-focus shots, giant-sized ghosts, a grave-robbing gone horribly wrong, mud everywhere, limb removal through sympathetic magic, etc. Lots and lots of etc.! Plus, as I’ve said, I really enjoy those fucked-up family dynamics, especially the way in which Alfie and Maya constantly envy and anger each other yet somehow recognize they’re more alike than not (both the self-elected defenders of their separate families’ honor, both ignored by their parents unless they want something from them, both at the mercy of forces beyond their control), which only makes them hate each other more! In the end, all Alfie really has left to fight her horrible destiny with is a winning mixture of perversity, stubbornness and sarcasm, thus making her my kind of antiheroine. This my shit, as the old song goes.
Sandra: You know, she’s my kind of antiheroine too. Maybe my “meh” feeling for the movie just comes from being super-tired and missing some of it? Which may be why I felt like it was disjointed. Note to self: When husband says, “Uh, Monkey, maybe we should watch the rest tomorrow, cause you’re falling asleep?” my response should not be some variation of “Whaaaa??? Noooo! Not asleeeeeep! Totally watching it!!!” Like I’m seven years old. Sheesh. Movie is now on my re-watch list. Maybe we’ll talk about this again next October, Gemma!
Cocktail: Red Devil
Sandra: This one sure looks purty in a glass, but be warned! It’s a lot of liquor. Drink responsibly! And don’t make a pact with the devil — if we’ve learned nothing else this October, we’ve learned that!
Ingredients:
- 1 1⁄2 ounces vodka
- 1 1⁄2 ounces peach schnapps
- 1 1⁄2 ounces Southern Comfort
- 1 1⁄2 ounces gin
- 2 ounces triple sec
- 2 ounces orange juice
- Splash of grenadine for color
Directions:
Put all the hooch into an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Add the juice and grenadine, and shake. Strain into in a non-flute champagne glass, and sip while reclining on your velvet chaise longue.
Book Recommendations
Gemma: When I think about Indonesia, the first person who comes to my mind is, of course, Nadia Bulkin — and May the Devil Take You reminds me of her a lot, not just in terms of geography, but because it also contains the twisty intergenerational female-centric drama her horror stories most often organize themselves around. Bulkin’s debut collection She Said Destroy (Word Horde) is the best place to start. I’ll point you in particular towards “Red Goat Black Goat” (for the goats) and “Girl, I Love You” (for the toxic female relationships), as well as “No Gods, No Masters,” which is her brilliant spin on the general Paranormal Activity franchise story template.
Sandra: I think I have to recommend Halli Villegas’s story collection again, because, you know, it’s called The Hair Wreath & Other Stories. And a lot of the stories have oogie things with (yuck) human hair. There’s one in which a spell is cast involving hair baked into a pie. So, so gross. And beautifully written. Villegas also does a lot with family dynamics, and things that are unspoken and cause terrible tension and undercurrents. I think she and Nadia Bulkin are spiritual sisters. And maybe Helen Marshall is also part of their unholy trinity, with her collection, Hair Side, Flesh Side. Though all three are more subtle than May the Devil Take You purports to be. At least on the surface. Down in the cellar where sacrifices are made? Who knows.
Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.
Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).
Ooooh, I might wanna try this cocktail