– No Spoilers –

Four siblings, Tyas, Fajar, Saleh and Azizah, are swept away thanks to torrential rain as they try to cross a river to go to the neighbouring village against the knowledge of their parents, including their well-respected but strict father. They then wake up in Hell and face severe punishment for their hidden sins, all while trying to reunite with one another.

Indonesian horror movies are no newbies to shocking scenarios and unrelenting torture that will leave viewers shocked and uncomfortable. In that respect, Siksa Neraka is a story that focuses, for the most part, on showcasing some gruesome scenes in a magma-filled landscape where four youngsters are constantly tortured for their supposed slights. The logic is out of place and feels like an exaggeration, considering the sins that we are talking about don’t automatically translate to having your tongue cut out.

When the movie first starts, it makes a point to give us some big foreshadowing, letting us know to get ready for some torture and drama that will follow. I think the movie would’ve been more impactful as a short film instead of a feature-length movie. The entire point of this movie, clearly, is to bring the tortures and the hellish landscapes of Hell to life. Unfortunately, that is not really impactful because the landscape itself looks really fake and doesn’t have the expansive and unending feel to it that you’d imagine.

Thus, repeating the same torture methods on everyone over and over again really makes things boring and uneventful after the first “hot tong experiment”. To make matters worse, things are equally uneventful “Earth side”, leaving us questioning what is interesting and what is not. I think using practical effects would’ve been a more interesting venture because the CGI is absolutely atrocious and takes you right out of the movie.

But the real problem here, however, is that the plot itself has little to no depth. Siksa Neraka tackles themes of sins and punishments but the former are so cut and dry that there is hardly anything to ponder on. A youngster getting thrown into lava because of his philandering ways seems really black and white with no space for deeper and more meaningful discourse other than “listen to your parents or you’re going to have a tong through your face”. It’s honestly a bit hilarious and definitely a missed opportunity.

I also wondered what the point of all this fear-mongering was. Sure, people should live an honest life and not deceive others etc, but this feels like a bit much. On top of that, the characters themselves hardly have any depth to them, so much so that their motivations seem confusing. It’s clear that they needed the “good kids” to actually be bad and the other way around because they needed a reason to torture some of the kids but we are never made aware of why these people are the way that they are. It’s really weird.

Siksa Neraka Review: Final Thoughts

Paper-thin plots and fear-mongering aside, the movie has very little scares and focuses more on the shock factor to shock audiences. There aren’t many moments that will truly pull you into the story because there’s not much plot to begin with and the landscapes of hell and the torture methods, too, fail to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, making this a meandering and rather boring watch.

Siksa Neraka is streaming on Netflix.

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