‘Sabrina’: Movie Review
Dull disgrace to Indonesia
In most circumstances, the word “Rocky Soraya” is a red flag when seeing horror movies. Why? If you look through his filmography, you’ll see a spam of gory jumpscares that has the same narrative flow, same characters, same concerns, and same style. The only reason he is successful is because of Indonesians who adopt the ‘jumpscare-is-horror’ notion, already covering their eyes even during the production company intro. His 2018 film Sabrina is a good example of how he writes horror, and to further understand him, watch it in repeat. That’s how shitty this movie is, and most others.
As Common Sense Media puts out, this movie is useless, because everything in it is already unlikable — except probably the in media res opening. We then move to the doll Sabrina, whose role will remind you of Chucky or Anabelle or… I don’t know. But worse: it looks fucking scary, it’s so insane that kids are literally lining up — probably cutting lines offscreen — for this overrated doll. In stark contrast with Chucky, whose normal initial face is decent and cool. When our main protagonist Vanya, a girl grieving on her mother's death and thus introverted, cheers up over Sabrina, I am mentally puking up.
Introductions to some elements in the movie feel relieving, and kind of gives some light to it, but is, in the end, a delicious bait to a painful hook. Out of all Soraya movies, I consider Sabrina the most obvious exploitation movie. Nothing — you heard me, nothing — makes sense here, but Soraya didn’t bother making an actual horror screenplay, because he learned well the Indonesian audience. Critics are also really isolated here. This is very disappointing because the performances are promising, the cinematography is decent (though some are excessive), and the editing is actually good.
GENRE: Horror
DURATION: 1 hour 53 minutes
WATCHED ON: Netflix
AGE RATING: 13+
LANGUAGE: Indonesian, English
