Penanggal: The Curse of the Malayan Vampire – review

Director: Ellie Suriaty Omar

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

It is nice for the penanggal (aka penanggalan) to get a look in within cinema and this Malay film actually sports some fairly good effects. Unfortunately the story is perhaps not as good as it might be with threads unanswered and a play with physical looks projecting (or not) the monstrous within the running time.

It is set in a more period time – I want to suggest the 1930s given the car we see but I’m not too sure and does have a strong thread about the saving grace of faith, particularly Islamic faith.

the tongue

It starts, however, with a birth. The midwife is Mak Ajeng (Normah Damanhuri) and the father, and Mak Ajeng’s hunchbacked man servant Pak Kadam (Jeff Omar), are outside the hut. The baby starts to cry but then there is a strange sound, the father goes in as the manservant curses and bemoans the timing. The father sees Mak Ajeng spinning as her head detaches, her tongue extends monstrously and she attacks mother and baby. He runs to the village and Pak Kadam goes in and grabs her headless body.

as a fireball

The father rouses the village against Mak Ajeng but as they look to go after her they see a burning light flash across the sky – the penanggal. It felt as though their nerves were slipping until a young boy starts extolling Allah and this emboldens them and they head, mob like, to her home. Pak Kadam has already got there, with the torso, and also there is her granddaughter Murni (Ummi Nazeera). The head returns and enters a big pot (presumably of vinegar to shrink her entrails before re-joining her body).

dissolving

The mob is approaching and Mak Ajeng calls Murni to her and tells her to become one with her blood and essentially passes her curse to her – which was part of the deal she had made with the powers of evil. Now, looking at Murni for a moment her face is covered in warts or tumours, and the implication is that her facial disfigurement has already associated her with the evil of her grandmother (there is also the implication later that the older woman perhaps killed her parents to get her heir). If not this, then the film is associating her ugliness with innocence and later beauty with the monstrous. With the curse passed on she dies and dissolves and Murni looks down on the villagers and then we see her walking, exiled from the village.

Azri Iskandar as Yusoff

We then meet Syed Yusoff Al-Attas (Azri Iskandar) a rich young business man who is due to get engaged to Sharifah Zahrah Al-Sagof (Fasha Sandha). She has concerns as to whether he can love her as she is a widow and his brother, Umar (Zul Ariffin), clearly has a thing for her. He is drawn as a very devout, peaceful man. Switching back to Murni and Pak Kadam has led her to a forest safe-house which is hidden by magic (one wonders why grandma didn’t reside there) and she suffers her first transformation into the penanggal. Afterwards she has lost the tumours on her face and is classically beautiful – we also hear a memory of grandma saying that only she could cure her, in time, and that has certainly proven true. Of course, fate will make her and Yusoff’s paths cross (and she uses magic to bewitch him).

flying head

The lore sees her head and entrails detach from her body (her head spinning rapidly as though it unscrews) and her flying through the night within a flame like halo. There is the dunking in vinegar to “soothe” her entrails when she rejoins. We do get some pov penangaal camera work. When whole she has a vivid scar at the neck. The idea of thorns being able to hold the vampire is mentioned. There isn’t an explanation as to the whole pact with evil and passing that pact on to an heir and Murni doesn’t seem altogether distressed at her new life (maybe more the consequences).

Ummi Nazeera as Murni

I think the issue is the storyline and where they go and don't go with it. For instance, the whole Zaharah plot. There is mention of her being pregnant, implied to be her dead husband’s child, but this isn’t used despite the vampire’s predilection for babies/unborn/pregnant women. Once Yusoff goes missing, she sneaks into Umar’s car to help find him, is burnt by the penanggal’s acidic blood and then vanishes from the story. It just seemed like baggage in the storyline rather than anything useful. Nevertheless this looks pretty good and it's worth seeing a penanggal. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.