Vibe
After a long illness kills the family matriarch, Rini and her younger siblings remain in an isolated house where signs suggest that their mother’s presence has not ended with burial. The family’s financial strain, absent father and vulnerable children make the haunting feel like an invasion of an already fragile household. Joko Anwar builds dread through sound and repeated domestic signals: bells, doors, music and the dead mother’s room become part of a pattern before the full occult history is disclosed. The 1981 setting is important because it connects the film to an earlier Indonesian horror tradition while allowing the remake to feel contemporary in pacing and visual control.
Watch for
- The 1981 setting is established through clothing, interiors and technology before the supernatural plot accelerates; the period is functional, not just decorative nostalgia.
- The mother’s presence lingers through sound and objects in the house, so grief and haunting become difficult for the family to separate.
- Rini’s responsibility for her younger brothers gives the haunted-house structure a practical economic dimension: the family is already under pressure before any ghost appears.
- Religious practice, neighborhood help and occult explanation coexist rather than collapsing into one system. Watch how characters test different forms of knowledge against the same events.
Production notes
IFFR identifies the film as a 2017 Indonesian production written and directed by Joko Anwar, set in 1981, and lists a 106-minute length; Shudder lists 110 minutes. That discrepancy must remain explicit until the exact distribution master is chosen. IFFR also records Rapi Films and CJ Entertainment as production companies and credits Ical Tanjung with cinematography. Anwar’s remake keeps the older film’s title and cultural memory but rebuilds the material as a period family drama with modern sound and production design. The creaking rural house, period objects and carefully rationed apparitions let the film operate as both domestic pressure cooker and supernatural mystery.
Trivia
- Joko Anwar wrote and directed the 2017 Indonesian film as a new version of the 1982 horror title Pengabdi Setan.
- IFFR lists a 106-minute festival version and credits Ical Tanjung with cinematography and Allan Triyana Sebastian with production design.
- IFFR describes the film as a major Indonesian box-office success and notes its deliberate 1981 period setting.
Legacy
Satan’s Slaves became a major Indonesian box-office success and helped bring wider international attention to contemporary Indonesian horror. By remaking a remembered local title through a period family drama, Joko Anwar connected haunted-house structure to specifically Indonesian religious, familial and folkloric anxieties rather than treating those elements as interchangeable genre decoration.