‘Primbon’ Netflix Movie Review - What A Disappointment

Rana (Flavio Zaviera), with her boyfriend, Janu (Chicco Kurniawan), goes into the woods to make a birthday gift for her mother. This information is presented to us using a video camera, and it immediately makes us suspicious - we quickly figure out that things will not go as expected. Unsurprisingly, Rana gets lost in the forest and is soon presumed to be dead. But after the completion of a ritual, Rana suddenly arrives at the doorstep, filling her parents - Banyu (Nugie) and Dini (Happy Salma) - with happiness and others with dubiousness. Has Rana returned as a devil or as a human?

Director Rudy Soedjarwo, with cinematographer Bella Panggabean, creates an uneasy atmosphere. The camera is constantly moving as if shaking with trepidation. The colors are muted, and lifeless. Everything on the screen feels rotten. Soedjarwo also decently manages to execute the jump scares. They consist of your usual "Boo!" moments (a face suddenly appearing out of nowhere, a spirit following a person), but they don't appear lazy or feeble. Hence, you wait and wait and wait for some sort of macabre eruption. You look forward to having a nerve-racking experience. You just wait for the nightmarish scares.

Unfortunately, Primbon severely underwhelms. All those creepy visuals - maggots on a scalp, Rana's discomforting stares - lead nowhere. What's worse is that Lele Laila's screenplay doesn't flesh out the relationship between the characters. The characters simply exist as pawns. The filmmakers have no interest in illuminating the drama or imbuing the horror with a sense of agitation. You admire the smooth movement of the camera and the slow burn approach to the material. But it all ultimately feels like a superficial decoration. Primbon is empty, unexciting, meh.

The movie makes the mistake of combining melodrama with horror. When Tari (Azela Putri) remembers how she and Rana used to have noodles during the good old days or when a mother, in tears, says she misses her child, Primbon becomes dreadfully dull to such an extent that it stops dead in its tracks. The momentum slowly dissipates, and the viewer starts to become restless. The final cleansing ritual, too, merely offers vague images that leave you more confused than afraid. Primbon fails on so many levels that you can't help but see that last video recording as a desperate attempt to win the hearts of the audience. The mushy "miss you mother" message gives rise to groans, not bittersweet sentiments. What a disappointment.

Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times