A 2024 film from director Hanung Bramantyo, this Indonesian film uses the kuyang as a central creature (and touches into sleep paralysis also). Now the kuyang is the Indonesian variant of the krasue and normally such a film would get a review but the film changes the lore (or should I say adds a branch of lore) and it felt a tad more playing with the tropes than depicting the vampiric kuyang. The “Kembalikan Tubuhku” of the title, incidentally, means “where’s my body” – this is relevant.
The film starts on a tea plantation and there is talk of a worker, Sugi, who died recently. One worker says he died of a heart attack, but another denied that. He suggests that Sugi saw Madam Ayu (Wulan Guritno) – who has been missing for a while – wearing a red dress in the fields, was consequently haunted by a certain song and then suffered from sleep paralysis and died. How the worker would have known about the sleep paralysis, what he saw when paralysed, or any of the other bits is not explored.
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| the kuyang |
They retire for the night, with one keeping watch over the picked tea. He gets drunk but then there is something causing the lights to fritz and something is knocked. He shines a torch and sees a cat but we have seen a shadow move and what appears to be a head. He passes out and starts coughing in his sleep. The flying head appears – confirmed as Madam Ayu – a rope shoots around his neck, strangling him and when he is found it is assumed he took his own life.
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| Carmela van der Kruk as Rara |
3 months later and plantation foreman Joku (Goetheng Iku Ahkin) is driving Rara (Carmela van der Kruk) and Sutan (Rangga Nattra) back to the plantation, having returned from their honeymoon. She has her head in papers from the business but Suttan sees a figure in a red dress in the fields. She inherited the business, after her father William (Willem Bevers) died and her mother, Ayu, was reported to have gone to the Netherlands (where William originally came from). Sutan was William’s nurse.
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| Fattah Amin as Yusuf |
It appears that the deaths on plantation (five of them) have been kept from her and the police. No sooner are they back than strange things start occurring – beginning with her suffering from sleep paralysis (which looked more like a seizure). Her negative reaction to Joku being in the house – he came when Sutan started shouting for help – indicates that she is a controlling, condescending woman. Sutan soon drafts in school friend, and now exorcist, Yussuf (Fattah Amin) and it is interesting that we get both a use of (perhaps pagan) exorcism and also Islamic intervention.
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| book of lore |
It is Yusuf who discovers that there is a kuyang involved. He explains that often it is black magicians who become kuyang and they prey on unborn (and infant) children in order that they can achieve eternal life. He equates them to the penanggalan. We certainly discover later that Ayu sold her soul for power and, had the film been around preying on the innocent for eternal life this would have been a review. Yusuf tells us, however, that some kuyang are simply searching for their bodies (having been beheaded). This is the sort we get here, with murder and mischief but no real vampiric activity.
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| Kuyang in the bath |
The film is ok. The period setting works well and the look is pretty sumptuous. The characters are pretty one-dimensional though with the cast struggling to stretch because of this. The effects are ok but the story and atmosphere are lacking. Nevertheless, it's good to have a kuyang in film again. If you were wondering the Trinil of the title is the pet name William had for Rara.
The imdb page is here.
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