Impetigore () is a 2019 horror film written and directed by Joko Anwar. The film stars Tara Basro, Marissa Anita, Christine Hakim, Asmara Abigail, and Ario Bayu. The film follows Maya (Basro), who travels with her friend Dini (Anita) to her remote ancestral village seeking an inheritance.
Almost a decade in development, the film was announced in 2011 but was shelved. Seven years later, Impetigore was secured as an international co-production between Indonesian, South Korean and American production houses. Filming took place on location at various sites in East Java, facing challenges due to the remoteness of the main village location and Anwar being hospitalised with dengue fever.
Impetigore premiered in Indonesia on 17 October 2019 and internationally at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It was later acquired by Shudder for international streaming. The film was a box office success in Indonesia and received favourable reviews internationally, with critics praising its cinematography, sound design and use of Indonesian folklore. It was selected as the Indonesian official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, but was not nominated. At the 40th Citra Awards, Indonesia's top film honours, the film received a record-breaking 17 nominations and won 6, including Best Picture, a second Best Director for Anwar, and a third supporting actress and ninth overall win for screen veteran Christine Hakim.
Plot
Best friends Maya and Dini work as tollbooth collectors in Jakarta. On a night shift, Maya is attacked by a man wielding a golok, who says he is from a village called Harjosari and calls Maya "Rahayu". Maya narrowly avoids being killed before the attacker is shot dead by police. Later, Maya shows Dini an old photograph given by her aunt, who has raised her in the city since her parents' mysterious deaths. The photograph shows a young Maya, who is identified as Rahayu, with her deceased parents Donowongso and Shinta, in front of a large house. Maya and Dini travel to the remote Harjosari village to look for the house in the hope of selling it as inheritance.
Posing as student researchers in Harjosari, the pair find the long-abandoned house and encounter cold, suspicious villagers. They witness daily funerals for children taking place and observe that many headstones in the cemetery belong to newborns. Dini is lured away by villagers, who slit her throat and flay her, mistaking her for Rahayu. While looking for Dini that evening, Maya spies village chief and dalang Saptadi attending the birth of a skinless baby, whom he proceeds to drown. A sympathetic villager Ratih tells her that 20 years ago, Donowongso, a rich dalang, made a pact with the devil and murdered three girls to heal his daughter Rahayu, who was born without skin. Since then, all babies in the village have been born skinless.
The ghost of one of the girls reveals to Maya that, to end the curse, she must bury the slain girls' skin, which had been made into wayang kulit puppets by Donowongso. The ghost also reveals that Maya was born out of the extramarital relations between Shinta and Saptadi. Disapproving of the affair, Saptadi's dukun mother Misni jinxed Saptadi to forget Shinta, and cursed Maya, who was named Rahayu at birth, to be born skinless. Donowongso then sacrificed three girls to cure Rahayu's skin and, in doing so, cursed the entire village. Saptadi then killed Donowongso, Shinta, and a group of wayang musicians during a performance in front of all the villagers, and framed Donowongso for the massacre. Misni then convinced the villagers that the curse can only be undone by flaying Rahayu and making puppets out of her skin. Rahayu was evacuated by her 'aunt', who in fact was one of Donowongso's servants, and renamed Maya to conceal her identity.
Maya and Ratih bury the puppets made from the three girls' skin and their spirits are pacified. Misni arrives with the villagers and they capture Maya. Maya appeals to Saptadi by telling him the truth, and Misni reveals that Saptadi was born out of her own extramarital affair with Donowongso's father, making him Donowongso's half-brother. As Misni moves to flay Maya, a remorseful Saptadi takes her hand to slit his throat instead. Horrified, Misni slits her own throat to join her son. As a healthy baby is finally born in the village, Maya escapes.
One year later, a villager suffers a violent miscarriage and it is shown that Misni's ghost has extracted the fetus and devoured it.
Cast
Cast adapted from RogerEbert.com.