SYNOPSIS:
Darah tells the tale of a most horrifying night for 6 friends. Two newly weds Adjie
and Astrid, along with 3 of their best mates decide to have an interstate road trip
as a last attempt to reconcile Adjie with his estranged younger sister Ladya.
Their drive is, however, cut abruptly when they run into Maya, a strange girl who
wanders aimlessly out of nowhere into their path. “I’ve been robbed” is all she has
to say. The friends unanimously decide to give her a ride to her isolated house in
the deep of the woods. This is when the night turns into a crimson-hell for the 6 friends. They find themselves
trapped and hunted by Dara and her three deadly protégés who have been born
and raised to systematically eliminate unsuspecting passerbys for one nefarious
reason.
One by one they are slaughtered. Everybody will bleed. The dark of night has never
looked so red.
MOVIE REVIEW:
To some, the only novelty about this Indonesia installment of the torture porn genre would be that the diabolical mastermind behind all the slashing and killing is a stern looking Indonesian matron. There's really nothing new about Darah that you have not seen in other generic torture porn movies. Just a bunch of blood thirsty psychotic family members that a group of travelers had the misfortune to bump into. Yup the same situation that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the whole host of wannabe copycats were in before.
Since we couldn't expect much from a generic torture porn movie, what could make it worse in following a rather formulaic plot? Well the stupid cliché reaction to their predators made it hard to feel for any of the characters that were going to be slaughter. It felt like these unfortunate folks were unwilling to leave the premise that cause them and their dead friends so much pain and suffering. There were moments that the victims seems to move extra slower so that the crazy killers could give them a slash in the neck (and it wasn't a slow mo moment, it was just bad choreography between the actors & directors). The characters were also dumb enough to not cover any blindspot behind/around them so that they could be surprised their captors over and over again.
One would think that after Wes Craven's Scream franchise, filmmakers would wise up while approaching a slasher flick.
But then again, folks who enjoyed this type of movies and crave for more of such would probably not think that much about a character's intelligent in handling a dire and unexpected situation. It's probably just the gore factor and the eye candy that they are looking for.
Well on the gore factors, Darah did fairly decent in producing the copious amount of blood and maimed body parts. It's not as lifelike as what Hollywood had been producing in recent years but in the short sequences that they were shown, the beheaded heads look decent enough to convince a normal guy could behead another guy's head with a knife. There were so much "blood" spew all over that it was convincing to believe that the captives kept slipping while running away from their killers.
Last but not least, Shareefa Daanish gave us a memorable Darah that folks who watched this movie will remember for some time to come. Some might her performance scary and some might find it comedic in a hammy sort of way. But nevertheless, she is the main reason that made this movie unique and I can't fathom that any sequels to this movie made without her involvement (not that I am asking for more Darah).
To sum it up, Darah is low on scares, extremely derivative and cliché ridden right to the very end. These days, we have the Saw franchise, horror movies from Hollywood, Japan, Thailand and etc that are pushing the gore limit without any religious censorship to bind them and a new Scream installment coming up, it makes one wonder why would anyone want to embrace Darah as a slasher flick that's worth catching?
SPECIAL FEATURES :
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Darah is filled with bloods and screaming from the fans. All these are well produced on a Tv screen using a dvd player.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
Posted on 05 May 2010
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