‘Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion’ Gets Bigger, Occasionally Better [BHFF 2022 Review]
Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves was one of 2017’s best horror movies. Anwar’s remake of the 1980 film of the same name was Indonesia’s answer to James Wan’s The Conjuring. Structured in much the same way with a spiritual swap—Islam replaced Christian ethos, pocong in lieu of standard ghosties—it was a remarkable outing, emerging as both a success in the west and Indonesia’s highest-grossing title of the year. Five years later, Anwar is back with his follow-up, the aptly titled Satan’s Slave’s 2: Communion. While the first film didn’t exactly call out for a sequel, what Anwar accomplishes here is nearly as assured as the first.
In the time since Satan’s Slaves, Anwar has tackled rural occult horror in Impetigore and scripted the devilishly cruel The Queen of Black Magic. That gothic absurdism carries over to Communion. It’s a movie that bears more in common with the original’s divisive, chaotic third act than the methodical, Wan-esque tension of the first. Communion is loud and conspicuously stylized. Entire sequences are lit by matches or bolts of lightning. Contextually, a terrible storm threatens flash floods. The scope and scale are expanded considerably. Anwar accomplishes a bonafide pantomime of 1984 urban Jakarta that lends credibility to the supernatural ethos.
Rini (Tara Basro), Toni (Endy Arfian), Bondi (Nasar Anuz), and Bahri (Bront Palarae) all return. It’s been three years since the events of the first. Youngest sibling Ian (Muhammad Adhiyat) is still missing, having gone with the cult at the conclusion of the first. Living in a brutalist structure fourteen stories high, the Suwonos feel safe surrounded by community. As they reason often, nothing bad could go wrong because there are plenty of people around to help.
Like the first, Communion’s biggest boon—aside from Anwar’s no-holds-barred culling from spectacular horror convention—is the cast. While Basro’s Rini, the first’s standout as the beleaguered surrogate mother to her siblings, is mostly sidelined until the climax, her performance remains as committed, grounded, and fierce as ever. The true star is Arfian’s Toni. Most of the early scares occur at his expense. A mid-movie beat that has him stumbling around the complex, incredulously performing tasks for other tenants—including retrieving a missing spoon—strikes the perfect balance of absurd comedy and ever-encroaching tension.
It helps that the central apartment complex itself is a miraculous structure of looping concrete stairwells and slick mezzanines. It’s wondrously open, allowing Anwar to craft some scares with scope. It’s also frighteningly intimate and contained, augmenting the claustrophobia with conventional fixtures like open doors and trash chutes.
Where Satan’s Slave’s 2: Communion falters most is its lack of truly standout scares. Anwar’s visual flourishes have never been better. Several visceral images rank among the gooiest ever seen. Yet, the scares themselves are too often of the misdirect than jolt variety, with even those falling aside in a protracted second act that has the three siblings attending to their own dealings for far too long. While the atmosphere is suitably thick and ominous, it’s too much wheel-spinning before the inevitable climax.
That climax, like the first, is sure to be divisive. Anwar crafts an extended chase beat lit only by bolts of lightning that puts most contemporary horror movies to shame. Yet, like the first, the more Anwar piles on—nods to both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, for instance—the less Communion feels like its own movie. Rather than a cohesive whole, at times, it risks becoming a patchwork of excess. There are walking corpses, specters, devilish ghosts, and even temporal tricks.
Satan’s Slave’s 2: Communion is at times brash, boisterous, loud, and incomprehensible. It’s also remarkably entertaining in its excesses. Anwar is as assured a horror master as any contemporary in the west, and Communion relishes his visual and narrative grandeur. Even when it risks derailing itself, there’s no denying Communion is a frightening return to one of this century’s best haunted houses.
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Satan's Slaves 2: Communion
Summary
Devilishly fun and gorgeously shot, Satan’s Slave’s 2: Communion is theatrical horror with both style and scale.
