Turns out Indonesia Box Office horror movie "Pengabdi Setan" or Satan's Slave managed to scare people half a globe away as it received The Scariest Film Award by Jury in the 2018 Popcorn Fright Film Festival on August 16. The fourth annual film fest was held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a week from August 10 to 16. It is the largest genre film event in the southeast of USA.
Satan's Slave (2017) by Joko Anwar is a reboot from a movie of the same title directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra, which was released in 1980. The plot of the original version has been noted to have a resemblance to Phantasm (1979) by Don Coscarelli.
However, in an interview with The Jakarta Post last year, Anwar said that his movie is just a prequel. There will be 2 more movies, with the third is said to be the remake of the original.
The story of Anwar’s Satan’s Slave is about a family with a father, a grandmother, and four siblings that's caring for their terrifying-looking and sick mother, who used to be a one-hit wonder singer. Not long after the mother's death, instead of mourning peacefully, they are suddenly haunted by supernatural beings.
As a movie that took only 18 days to shoot, 15 days to produce and around USD150,000 in the budget, Satan's Slave has achieved more than one can expect from a horror movie.
In Indonesia itself, the movie attracted more than 4.2 million moviegoers and is the most successful horror movie of all time. Satan's Slave also reached box offices in other countries, including Mexico and Hong Kong.
Of course, the movie is also a big hit in the neighbouring countries, such as Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. It even became the highest grossing Indonesian film of all time in Malaysia with RM6 million revenue at the end of 2017. The total revenue of Satan's Slave has reached 16.2 million USD worldwide.
Joko Anwar's "Pengabdi Setan" has won more than 20 accolades nationally and internationally and has been played in 42 countries, including the USA and the everal European countries. The sequel will be released next year.
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