Lonely teen Tomi (Fachrul Rozy) may live in a wealthy-ish home, but his stern father is always working; his good-time sister is always at the discotheque; and his recently deceased mom has just come back from the dead as an unholy apparition of pure evil. While most kids would experiment with sex or drugs to cope, he instead reads horror movie magazines, a direct path to the Unholy One.
The family, having lost their faith in God, becomes bewitched under housekeeper Darminah (Ruth Pelupessy), a diabolical agent of the devil who will inadvertently kill anyone who dares interfere with her plans to turn the children into slaves, presumably of Satan; this includes gruesomely resurrecting the woefully asthmatic groundkeeper and the daughter’s cracked-skull boyfriend.
These demonic forces of absolute malevolence are spooky as hell, with their pale white skin, pinhole-pupiled eyes and newly formed pair of vampire teeth ready to bites the blasphemous necks of the scared family. And even though this clan is offered chance after chance to get in good with God, they constantly turn it down, right up to the very end when a holy man shows up at their door with an army of spiritual warriors.
While not as downright bizarre as other Indonesian flicks — have you seen The Queen of Black Magic? — Satan’s Slave is far more atmospheric, with genuinely creepy moments that almost feels like it should be viewed on a 10th-generation VHS dub at 3 in the morning. It’s a personal style that has me believing director Sisworo Gautama Putra was an unheralded master of horror, in Indonesia and beyond. —Louis Fowler