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Timo Tjahjanto
At the forefront of ultra-violent action and horror, this Indonesian director started his brand of violent entertainment before the popular Indonesian 'The Raid' movies, but rode on the popularity of those movies by employing some of the same actors and choreographers. However, he pushes beyond even the violence of those movies as well as the popular John Wick series. His primary focus is on savage and brutal fights, showing a wide array of bone-crushing, flesh-ripping damage including burns, extreme damage from bullets and explosions, and so on. The gore is secondary to the ultra-violence, though there is plenty of it, and he does inject over-the-top splatter in some scattered scenes. As such, the violence gets top billing over the gore. Martial arts obviously feature heavily in his movies, though they are of the down-to-earth, messy and savage kind rather than the graceful Hong Kong kung-fu movies of yore. The biggest problem with this approach is that it combines realistic damage and fighting techniques with very unrealistic consequences and outcomes. As opposed to the cleaner, or often supernatural HK action films, this approach only serves to emphasize the complete lack of realism in the fighting. Fighters shake off ridiculous amounts of very visible damage and keep fighting with full force, they pause and pose when they could go for the kill, they miss with hundreds of bullets, fighters line up to fight one at a time, female muscle beats male muscle all too often instead of using technique and speed, and so on. Sometimes this is taken to ridiculous extremes without the camp of movies like 'Story of Ricky', wanting to have its cake of realism and eat entertaining unrealism too. Some of his films tone down the over-the-top approach such as the much better and relatively more grounded 'Headshot', others take things to ridiculous extremes. In any case, fans of ultra-violence should be very well entertained from his output, as the choreography and the effort invested in these movies are top-notch. So far, he seems to split his time between action and horror genres, both of these outings featuring his brand of savage violence.
ABCs of Death, The
See Extreme Movies.
Tjahjanto tries his hand at an action-comedy, and while such a detour would normally be welcome, unfortunately, he turns out to be very poor at comedy. Four eccentric vigilantes and killers led by their ex-criminal adopted father have to deal with a mysterious assassin and gang of criminals while trying to hide from their father's real daughter who happens to be a cop. They try to retire but she follows a trail to an island, unleashing waves of violence upon them all, led by very strange and determined criminals. Brutal action is forcefully merged with very silly juvenile comedy with a wide stable of colorful but very broadly drawn characters. As with most of Tjahjanto's movies, the splatter is limited to a few scenes, as if he brings in a gore-effects guy based on a limited quota of scenes per movie. The beginning and end contain almost all of the splatter in a handful of short scenes, with exploding heads and bodies and one scene goes all out into splatter mayhem. The fighting action is pretty good, some of the interactions and antics are entertaining, but the majority of the film is painfully juvenile. He also tries, unsuccessfully, to direct some Jackie Chan scenes of action slapstick. Ultra-violent and sadistic entertainment from an Indonesian and Japanese co-production. There's a serial killer in Japan who doesn't seem to have much of a modus operandi, killing anyone in any way that suits his fancy, except he is obviously addicted to violence torture-games and murder, and is obsessed with making the ultimate snuff-video-art, posting his video works on the internet. In the meantime, a journalist with a ruined life in Indonesia has a violent encounter that triggers his dark side and launches an intense vigilante spree as he goes after the twisted crooks that ruined his life. When he posts his acts online, he makes a connection with the serial-killer who goads him into developing his art further. The ultra-violence doesn't just come from these two people however, as the movie gleefully piles on the sick sadists and even a demented mother, all resulting in an endless spree of brutality and utter chaos as these crazies clash in unexpected ways. This movie is part intense action, part sick sadism, part slick dark horror, part exploitation. A sequel to the Evil-Dead-inspired Indonesian horror film. The first movie was primarily about the endless jump-scares, freaky and ubiquitous demonic appearances and energetic chaos and violence, spells and possessions, but only one extreme splatter scene despite all of the bloody violence. This one is no different, mistakenly believing that more-is-more, except it also ups the splatter quota a bit, with around three gory scenes of: a demon emerging from a human body, ripping off a face, and vomiting a geyser of demonic blood. In fact, if this film had gone over-the-top like Evil Dead with camp and splatter instead of over-the-top with standard horror, it may have worked better. The story is about the survivors of the first movie finding themselves, very implausibly, hijacked into another similar demonic pact with an evil patriarch and demonic slave-witch, causing ultra-violent chaos amongst a group of orphans before taking over souls and using them against each other. In theory it is non-stop savage Evil-Dead-esque horror, in practice, it gets tiresome by trying too hard to pack as much random and over-the-top horror scenes as possible into a movie. Another Indonesian ultra-violent action movie with Iko Uwais, following up on Headshot and the two Raid movies. I found the first Raid movie quite good and intense, the second one was very overrated with too much unrealistic and obviously staged fighting, and it has gone downhill since then, with increasingly violent but less and less realistic fights. Which brings us to this ridiculous gore-fest. This one is modelled after John Woo's gangster heroic-bloodshed movies, complete with repenting assassin, internal rivalries, old friends and betrayals. But whereas that little sub-genre allowed for some suspension of disbelief concerning the amount of damage the protagonists could take and still limp to the next fight, this one doesn't even bother defining a borderline and has its fighters take such an absurd amount of deep wounds, crippling, bone-crushing punishment, bullets, and massive cuts, that it becomes an unintentional comedy. It's not just about them surviving, but the way in which they brush off the most extreme damage and keep on fighting as if nothing happened. I couldn't stop laughing for the climactic fight scene. In this sense it starts approaching the ridiculousness of Story of Ricky except without the intentional comedy and campy, over-the-top splatter. Most of the movie consists of fights, endless carnage, gashing wounds, blood sprays, brutal tearing apart of bodies with several dozens types of weapons and tools, including billiard balls, pieces of wood or glass, air-conditioners, electric saws and sharp wire, ripping, crushing, slicing and breaking every part of the body and then some. The choreography is a mixed bag: Some fights are good, but much is unimpressive and unrealistic, including things like crowds lining up to fight one-by-one, guys holding their positions still while the guy shifts for the killing blow, some obvious untrained fighters with slow movements and projected swings, girls matching their muscles against guys twice their size, and so on. Also, these guys are just plain savage, taking the 'art' out of martial arts. The camera-work, special effects and especially the stunt-work are all top-notch and very impressive however. It's back to extreme action for Tjahjanto, relatively more restrained than the ridiculous 'Night Comes for Us', and the movie is better for it, though it's not as good as 'Headshot'. Once again, we get an extremely skilled assassin, taking its cue from John Wick, by risking her life and reputation for something small. There is actually more emotional resonance in this film as she connects to a young boy in a devastatingly difficult and dark situation, which is another reason why this film should rate higher in Tjahjanto's repertoire. While the fighting style and endless savage damage give the action a more realistic feel relative to 'Night Comes for Us', this is still not going to be mistaken for realistic fighting, especially given that the protagonist in his film is a teenage girl who takes on nothing less than a whole city full of triad villains, corrupt police, as well as an inhuman assassin club. In other words, this is Tjahjanto's female version of John Wick with even more violence. All the villains are flat, one-dimensional sadistic evil characters. The final fight is an exception that reaches absurd levels of ultra-violence and body damage reminiscent of 'Night Comes for Us'. As usual, there is plenty of gore, but the more extreme gore is only featured in a couple of scenes of beheading and blood-geyser sword action. Entertainingly savage with some surprisingly good drama, but he hasn't found the correct balance yet to classify these as classics.
Takut: Faces of Fear
See Brian Yuzna.
V/H/S/94
See Gore & Splatter.
Derivative Indonesian ultra-violence that is partially a retread of the French 'Inside' with less gore, and also a variant of the backwoods genre with a twist: This time the raving killers are rich and noble-born folk instead of inbreeding hillbillies. Perhaps it says something about Indonesia that it is more afraid of its rich folk, then again, perhaps I am reading too much into it. Otherwise, it's the same old drill: A group of annoying youngsters encounter a mysterious girl that leads them to her house where a raving bloodthirsty family awaits. Besides being derivative, the victims spend the whole movie running around like stupid insects, always doing the most inappropriate things and almost never fighting back until the end when it's time for some of the killers to die, and then the killers start doing stupid things. People are butchered in various gory ways, and some die randomly, the rest keep coming back for more slashing, beheading, smashing, chainsawing, stabbing and burning until its time for the movie to end. The short upon which this full-length film is based was also featured in 'Takut: Faces of Fear'.
Portals
See Gore & Splatter.
V/H/S 2
See Gore & Splatter.
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