Malaysian Oscar Hopes Rest on Low-budget Horror Film1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteImagine you are living alone in a forest with your two children, surrounded by nothing but a looming wall of vegetation, with no other humans in sight. One day, as your family goes about its daily chores, a small girl caked in mud and what seems like coagulated blood makes a sudden appearance at your door. No matter how much you try to help her, she will not speak. When she finally does, her curse chills your blood. “You will all die before the next moon,” she says in a demonic voice.
This is the premise of the low-budget supernatural horror movie Roh (Soul), the 2019 debut of the Malaysian filmmaker Emir Ezwan. The film is loosely based on Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (Demon Hag), a 1964 Japanese film about two ghoulish women who hide in a swamp during a feudal war and scavenge the bodies of all the passing soldiers they can kill.
Selected by the National Film Development Corp. Malaysia, known as FINAS, Emir’s film is Malaysia’s unlikely entry for Best International Feature Film at the next Academy Awards, scheduled for April 2021. “I honestly think there isn’t any chance of winning, but that’s not the point,” the director told Nikkei Asia. “I hope Roh will open more doors to a new wave of interest in Malaysian films all over.”
Image Credits: Kuman Pictures
