Directed by Emir Ezwan
Cut off from civilisation, a single mother puts her children on high alert when they bring home a young girl caked in clay. She tells of spirits and spirit hunters, but these are not mere superstitions. As more strangers show up on her doorstep, she quickly finds another reason to fear the forest.
Anima, ROH, Soul, Душа, Alma, 灵魂, 靈魂
SingaporePG13 Singapore International Film Festival 
Indonesia Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival 
USA SingaporePG13 
Italy 
UK15 
Poland16 USA Indonesia Italy Poland Singapore UK USA 
This movie does for Malaysian jungles what The Witch did for New England forests.
living in the wilderness sounded like a good idea, but then i watched this
Pretty solid Malaysian folk horror. It feels slow burn, kinda gives the wailing type of vibes, fully atmospheric, a lot of beautiful shoot, simply indulge my eye with well-captured forest views. Well executed at some jumpscare moments. Nice horror imagery throughout. No hippy ending stuff doe.
“The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome”
Malaysian folk horror, presumably based on a local legend. The film takes place in the Malaysian jungle. We focus on a small family that is thrown into turmoil when they are visited by a young girl covered in clay. This was a low budget production but it looks absolutely great. The jungle setting is gorgeous - it really presents an air of mystery and a threat all of its own. The visuals from director Emir Ezwan are powerful and effective. The plot is a real slow burn and it has to be said that it often feels like not a great deal is happening, meaning much of the film relies on the atmosphere and visual elements. The story is not…
Cut off from civilisation, a single mother puts her children on high alert when they bring home a young girl caked in clay. She tells of spirits and spirit hunters, but these are not mere superstitions. As more strangers show up on her doorstep, she quickly finds another reason to fear the forest.
Roh aka Soul is a 2019 Malaysian independent folk horror film. It was selected as the Malaysian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. At the 31st Malaysia Film Festival, Roh won six awards, including Best Film.
This is my second Malaysian horror film in the past two days, the first was called Possession which I felt…
Well, hi there.
After a few very American-heavy days, I had the urge to watch a foreign film and stumbled upon this Malaysian folk horror that's just casually chilling on Netflix. (unbeknownst to me.)
A single mother, cut off from civilization. Her kids bring home a young child, covered in clay. Her behaviour is.. slightly questionable and as more strangers show up on her doorstep.. the mom, Mak, soon finds another reason to fear the forest/jungle.
Well, so one of the top reviews compared this to The VVitch so I was really excited to check it out.
Alright. First of all, this was shot on location in Dengkil and the forest looks so beautiful. There were also some really interesting…
A solid but kind of by the book Malaysian folk horror film, Roh is a riff on The VVitch and The Wailing that never reaches the heights of those two masterpieces.
A single mother living in the jungle with her two kids sees a clay-covered young girl coming to their home and killing herself right after cursing them. A couple of strangers will then visit them — but which one is the evil one?
Despite its short 82 mins runtime, the film is a slow-burn and never quite manages to deliver the sense of dread that comes with the aforementioned two films. It looks too clean, too conventional, and the characters aren't deep enough for the audience to connect with them. There are a couple of effective scary scenes though, just not enough to warrant a rewatch.
A big shoutout to Aswin Rayendra for recommending the creepy-ass Malaysian folk horror flick Roh (or Soul in English).
After recently watching The Medium, a Thai version of The Wailing, I realized I had a soft spot for Asian rural folk horror. Something about the rustic lifestyle in a tropical setting, outside the urban environment of nearly all movies in the horror genre, is captivating and unsettling. I decided to make a list of these types of movies and that list is way too short.
I think this setting really gets under the skin of us urban/suburban-dwelling comfort hounds. There's a simple scene very early in the movie that is disturbingly effective. A boy and a girl who live in…
Kicking off my halloween night with a horror movie from my residing country, Malaysia. This is a small budget one made in around USD 72,500 but the outcome quality is comparable to those arthouse horror-fest from A24 or Blumhouse or XYZ, even it also represented the country for the Academy Awards 2021 final selection. Really, it’s looking drop dead gorgeous with its lush yet muted & serene forest setting, and how they took the angles perfectly did the picture justice; fine establishing shots, balanced composition and some of really cool ghost sequences, adding such tension and creepiness to an already eerie movie. There’s such dread lurking around the characters and it’s just feel so dark, uneasy and intimidating, it’s a movie…
March Around the World 2024 #6 🇲🇾
In this dark and remote jungle, the children need not fear tigers, for there are none. Only Crocodiles and Lizards live here, although if legend be believed there are other more sinister beings out there. Hunters of hearts, shifting among the shadow of night.
Roh plays to its Malaysian folk horror roots, with crackling fires and moody notes playing to a host of unnerving ghostly machinations that greedily feed on the soul. Darkness and fear, children in harms way, a lone parent caught in the middle of this dread fuelled drudgery.
Typically steady and devoid of urgency, the film lulls its viewer into a trancelike state before releasing its camouflaged payload. Creepy indeed, and a great example of the 'hairs standing up on the back of your neck' style of horror for which this part of the world is renowned.
There is something atmospheric in Roh (2019) that makes me both amazed and feeling unsafe. The pace is well kept and i LOVE the minimalist style. The whole opening sequence is immersing. Add that with the bare unadorned landscape that captured in a gorgeous cinematography.
The "quiet" screenplay is pretty great, especially with Farah Ahmad's wonderful acting. It has probably one of the best midpoint this year because it had a strong and game-changing impact to the narrative. The main theme of human vs evil is SUPERBLY written. Stepping aside from that, i wish the personal story about protagonists' late father could be explored more. Because it felt kinda distant without that internal conflict. The result is i got no…
This Malaysian folk horror is a quiet mood piece that's light in story but heavy on atmosphere. It ramps up the chills very slowly and can get quite disturbing in a way I'm not quite prepared for. It does a fantastic job creating and maintaining an atmosphere of dread and utilizing its minimalistic setting. You can feel ominous threats around their rural home and there's an inescapable quality to it. Having scary kid in it adds to the overall creepiness of the film. I wish I would have been more emotionally invested in the story and characters but overall it delivers enough chills and there's just enough story to built the premise of why the characters in the situations they are in.
