overblik
A high-security prison under the yoke of a tyrannical warden is rocked by a spate of gruesome murders, with victims’ bodies put on morbidly spectacular display. Who is the perpetrator, and who will be the next prey? Between spontaneous dance-offs and sudden prayers, kinetic fistfights and Kierkegaard invocations, hapless inmates scramble for cover. Overcoming internal gang rivalry, they unite to decipher the motive behind the killings and pacify their invisible, otherworldly enemy. In Ghost in the Cell, Indonesian genre wizard Joko Anwar crafts a gleefully grotesque horror-comedy that is disarming in more ways than one. Featuring a teeming ensemble of goofy characters on the verge of breakdown, the film shuttles nimbly between levity and graphic brutality, producing laughter that often gets stuck in the throat. Making emphatic use of primary colours, Anwar lends his twelfth feature a painterly force, but with cheeky references to ecological plundering and worker exploitation, he also augments it with an irreverent, political edge. Yet this is no “elevated horror”, just pure genre fireworks.