May the Devil Take You Too (Sebelum Iblis Menjemput: Ayat Dua)

 Not even two years after surviving a demonic ordeal that would wipe out their family, Alfie (Chelsea Islan) and Nara (Hadijah Shahab) are approached by a group of young orphans who suffered their own brush with another demon-summoning father figure.

 When I say approach, what I mean is that they break into their apartment with ski masks and kidnap them. The orphans are enthusiastic, but really, really not very bright; It makes for a high-energy home invasion scene, at least, and it keeps tensions high later when Alfie is understandably angry at these idiots, even after they apologize and explain their situation.

 Sadly, that's a running theme in this sequel to May the Devil Take You: It sacrifices sense and intelligence in an unholy pact to keep its energy high at all times. It's sporadically successful, but it makes for a pretty dumb movie.

 Other than that the basic setup is decent... if you can get over the whole abduction scenario. Sigh. Like the first movie, it starts off with very slightly more "subtle" scares (if you can call ghouls jumping straight at the camera or leering very visibly in the background subtle) as ghosts haunt Alfie and her new acquaintances. Then Alfie is tricked to read from a leatherbound journal that bears a striking similarity to the Necronomicon Ex Mortis from Evil Dead, allows the ghost of the orphans' father to come back from the dead... and the film starts putting the new cast through the wringer one by one.

Not sure why, but the specters in these movies look really jolly to me.

 The orphans (Widika Sidmore, Baskara Mahendra, Lutesha, Karina Salim and Arya Vasco) are all thinly drawn types, so even after Alfie warms towards them a tiny bit their demises don't really register. The level of mayhem is kept up admirably, though, even when it's a cavalcade of concepts borrowed from other horror movies with a special place set, as always, for Evil Dead (besides the book, there's also a satanic basement with a familiar-looking trap door and several other direct lifts from Raimi's body of work; It's definitely upfront about its inspirations).

 All that said there's a lot of fun to be had in seeing what writer/director Timo Tjahjanto does next and how he goes about it, and the movie as a whole is enjoyable as an unpretentious slice of low-budget nastiness. Its story is not as effective as the first movie's, but it goes about its grim business with similar aplomb and a sense of humour, and there's enough variety that it's never boring.

Because the register is always kept as high as possible, most of the acting is dialled up to eleven; there are a lot of screamed conversations in this movie, and some unfortunate overacting. I liked Chelsea Islan's work as Alfie in part one, but she's no Bruce Campbell (not a slam; only one person is), and her deranged emoting on a few key scenes here, while clearly modelled after Ash, doesn't work very well as the tone is closer to the original Evil Dead than to the more comedic sequels.

 The film does get a little more ambitious in its third act, though not in a particularly interesting way, and it's underserved by its budget (it attempts to use CGI to portray both fire and things crawling under the skin, two types of effects that remain notoriously difficult to pull off even for productions with much more money at their disposal). Still, it does take the series in a different direction; We'll see where the upcoming second sequel ends up, but I'm up for a Sebelum Iblis Menjemput: Ayat Tiga / May the Devil Take You Thrice where the victims get a little more agency.

May the Devil Take You (Sebelum Iblis Menjemput)

  Timo Tjahjanto's May the Devil Take you is a silly family melodrama that turns into an even sillier horror/possession movie that is, like most of the 'Mo brothers output, heavily influenced by Sam Raimi in general and Evil Dead in particular. This one goes beyond their usual energetic homage and adds in whole elements from Raimi's masterpieces like the camera following around a disembodied energy that can possess people, a cabin in the jungle and ghouls that can only be described as deadites.

 Lesmana Wijaya (Ray Sahetapy) is an overnight rags to riches story. His secret? A pact with the Devil Iblis, of course. But something went sour and now Lesmana's lost all his money and his health; he's now in a vegetative state, his flesh erupting in bloody pustules and his organs failing. He recovers conscience just long enough to puke black blood all over the face of his son's girlfriend.

 His family converges on his old house in the middle of the jungle to see if they can find something to sell. They arrive at the same time as Alfie (Chelsea Islan), Lesmana's estranged daughter from his first marriage, which leads to some tension as there's no love lost between them for reasons that will be explained during the movie. We take her side anyways, as the second wife (Karina Suwandhi) is coded as a complete harpy - I don't speak Indonesian, but just the way she pronounces Alfie's name is so over the top it'd make a daytime soap's villain grit their teeth with envy.

 The family drama is short-lived, though: Soon someone tears some seals off and breaks open the door to the basement and the mother is immediately possessed, turning into an unholy, scenery-chewing abomination that starts terrifying both her kids and Alfie. It looks like the patriarch tried to renege on his deal, and the ghost of the priestess that brokered the agreement has come back to collect all their souls.

 It's a fun, goofy movie, full of well made but pretty cheesy scares - at first figures in the background popping up to deliver Blumhouse-esque jump scares, progressing to more physical threats as the deadite attacks Alfie and her step-siblings (Pevita Pearce, Samo Rafael and Hadijah Shahab). I think my main problem is that the possessed are just as likely to mug goofily at the camera as they are to bite a chunk off someone's arm; At one point the possessed mom even starts wagging her tongue at us like fucking Gene Simmons. Definitely not the sort of Demon you want to emulate if you're trying to be scary.

 The script (also by the director) doesn't really break any new ground and is pretty contrived, but its worst crime is that it gets pretty repetitive; At almost two hours, the film drags quite a bit. Still, there's a lot of mayhem packed into the latter half, delivered with Tjahjanto's usual verve and visual invention and a mean undercurrent of black humor.
 It's not a hugely gory movie, but injuries abound and they all look painful. The makeup is superb, if a bit (unwittingly) funny in a couple of places, and the sound design is - like so much of the rest of the movie - so over the top it's almost charming.