In a notorious prison run by a cruel head guard, a malevolent force starts killing inmates in the most splattery ways, and they have to figure out what it is and how to stop it. Simple. Outside of the over-the-top violence, what the film does best is to establish life inside the concrete walls. The main crew, reluctantly led by Angarro (Abimana Aryasatya, The Night Comes for Us), takes in newcomer, Dimas (Endy Arfian), a crusading journalist who is somehow connected to this danger and who was convicted of the aforementioned ceiling fan death.
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Anwar’s script takes the time to let the audience get to know these men, their personalities, and the dynamics of their daily lives. There are factions and rivalries, crews and a whole ecosystem and society developed while removed from the world. There’s a sharp caste divide in place, where poor prisoners are piled into close quarters and abused, while the wealthy, capitalist convicts live in relative luxury, all their needs tended to, and even allowed to come and go from the prison as they please. At one point it plays like a first-day-at-a-new-high-school as Dimas gets the lowdown on who is who and who is up to what from a more seasoned prisoner. All of this serves to create a bond both between the characters and with the audience, so when they do start meeting horrific ends, it carries emotional weight and hits home for both us and them. These people aren’t mere cannon fodder, you actually care when they explode into goo. And so many of them explode into goo.
While this is typically the film’s greatest strength, it can also be its biggest detriment. A few times we wander so far afield into the details and backstories that the forward momentum slows to a near-standstill. For the most part, the inter-prisoner bits work, as we see how they exist in relation to one another, various perilous peace pacts always teetering on the edge. When we look beyond that, however, issues arise. The gleefully corrupt warden can be humorous for a moment, but his schtick quickly wears thin. It’s understandable when Angarro’s young sons come for a visit. The script wants to give him something to look forward to, a reason to keep fighting and all that. Which is fine, but the execution leaves much to be desired. It’s too generic and tepid to elicit much response, and besides, his friendships and connections with his fellow inmates more than accomplishes all of this, leaving the kids as little more than an afterthought.
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In the end, the real Ghost in the Cell was the friends we made along the way. This is goofy and charming at the same time it’s bloody and horrifying. It’s not always an easy balance to pull off, in fact making a horror-comedy that’s both funny and scary is a tricky feat, but Anwar pulls it off with apparent ease. You go from laughing to recoiling in disgust and back many, many times. Sly and witty and violent, this is definitely one worth tracking down. And if you can see it with a big, rowdy audience, even better. Also, this prison may be rough and full of vicious, head-tatted offenders, but it definitely has the best in-house dance program. [Grade: B+]
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