The unknown depths of a forest haunt a young mother and her two children in Roh (a title that translates to “soul” from its native Malay). Much of Emir Ezwan’s film is suggestive of an actual threat, until an explosive and surprisingly savage final act literalizes at least a part of the nature of that threat, but the writer/director still controls this story with an expert sense of mood. That overtakes the familiarity of its set-up, though there are narrative surprises in store that have the ability to chill the bone. It is an unspoken rule in the horror genre never to do anything to children or pets. Ezwan almost certainly bulldozes through this line, at least as it relates to children, multiple times over the course of the story, told in 83 succinct minutes.
Mak (Farah Ahmad) lives on the edge of a vast forest with her children Along (Mhia Farhana) and Angah (Harith Haziq). The father in the family has “gone away,” and we don’t get a very substantial reason for his absence. All we know is that Along wishes that her dad would return and that Angah seems to have no strong feelings about his father’s absence either way. Their fortunes are not great, but they only disintegrate further upon the appearance of a young girl, covered in clay and refusing to speak. She eventually reveals her name to be Adik (Putri Qaseh), but something is off about this child. Mak fears some possession by an unknown force. The local clairvoyant Tok (June Lojong) offers no easy answers, and eventually, Pemburu (Namron), a man claiming to be Adik’s father, comes to search for his “daughter.”
Until that finale takes a figurative flamethrower to what we believe may be going on here, this is the extent of the film’s plot, but Ezwan’s film is not really about plot. It’s far more about the mood established by the director and cinematographer Saifuddin Musa. They depict the surrounding trees of the forest and the foliage therein as an enclosure entirely separated from anything we could consider the human world. There is no glimpse at any outside world, because for these characters, quiet survival is all they know – and what leads to the events of that climax. Eventually and inevitably, such isolationism can only lead to an open door through which that unseen and long-unspoken threat can access the poor humans in its path.
Each of the primary actors understands the assignment at hand: Ahmad is great as the desperate Mak, who only wants her children to survive this ordeal, and Farhana and Haziq essay brave turns in two of the more notable child performances in recent years. That is particularly the case for Farhana, whose Along is truly put through the wringer after Adik exits the narrative in a permanent sense and whatever spirit haunts this place begins to terrorize Along and Angah.
The fact that the spirit targets the children in this story offers some clue as to its nature, but not even in a climax that separates Mak from her children and Along and Angah from each other – only to wreak havoc on the nerves of an audience already tense with anticipation about what is to come. The final act of Roh is unflinching in how it confronts the truth of its scenario (a bit involving a protruding nail is the stuff of nightmares), and that’s another way of saying that the film does a thorough job of coming together beautifully by the end.
Photo courtesy of Film Movement
The post Roh appeared first on Spectrum Culture.