SYNOPSIS (IMDb) - Once a famed shadow puppet master, RAMLEE now lives as a recluse in a Malaysian village terrorized by a man-eating crocodile. The arrival of a young Indonesian girl, DEWI, awakens old demons that refuse to stay hidden.
REVIEW
Dain Said has once again go full 'Guillermo del Toro' over local myth and folk lore like his previous gem such as Bunohan, Dukun, Interchange and Harum Malam.
What makes this one more sinister is him turning the art of wayang kulit inside-out like, a pair of socks and made it to his own meat puppet to tell his version of a story from the shadows, giving birth to a new breed of a pseudo-genre kind of play, together with the flipping of the name 'Wayang Kulit' to 'Kulit Wayang'. (Its all in the semantics lah!)
It is now no longer shadowplay, the traditional Malay art form but but an living and breathing entity embodied in a shape a crocodile man who only feeds on young virgin flesh and sliced off their tounges so they cannot talk back or scream for help. (its all in the semiotics lah!)
It is a gory and sacrilegeous play of 'red herring' by the writer and director to deliver some subtexual critique towards their target, with the latter wondering what gave them that massive headache, because they know not. (Jeanne Cuisnier in her 1930s book about wayang kulit, 'What I Saw In Malaya' suspected that it is 'covering' over an act of sacrifice for the deities!)
The hints are everywhere. The film talks about all sorts of 'angin', which means the natural gift or passion one have towards something. Included in one dialogue a list of 'angin' including 'angin filem'.
Pekin Ibrahim plays the ruthless suit-wearing capitalist who has nothing more in his head other than the dollar sign and hid behind his mask of someone passionate about the art, while at the same time feast and cannibalised the younglings. He rants in anger about someone's show breaking the stage in London. He also goes sarcastic in saying "Better blame the crocodiles than your own race."
And the 'wayang' is shown from both sides of the screen. What you see and what actually is going on. (it is all in the mise en scene lah!)
Read the synopsis again, and you will see (if you can see lah) that it is a scaled down horror trying to survive in a middle of a swamp full of crocodiles! This film survived by being a 'Sang Kancil' and outsmarted all the 'buayas'!
A 'Dewi' (or an angel) had to descend down through the Ramayanas and go semi 'deus ex machina' to break the curse! It is all in the gestalt lah! And the name of the protagonist is ...*end of transmission.
Trailer:
