The Anniversary Gift

The film maker argues that this film does not involve any spirits. An Indonesian horror film without spirits is for that reason alone unique. According to the young maker, the human psyche can be more frightening than ghosts or demons.
The Anniversary Gift is outspokenly experimental and therefore also fairly special in this part of the world. The images are consciously grubby and poor. Agusta used low resolution VHS video to make the images raw and authentic: the authenticity of security cameras, which goes well with the images of a man locked up and being tortured. In these images, the film is cruel and violent, even though a strange kind of sadistic pleasure also plays a role.
Despite its intemperance in picture and sound, The Anniversary Gift is basically minimal. Visually it has a kind of primitive power, and dramatically it only has a few characters. The man who is tortured and the woman who tortures are the protagonists. Who the man is and why he’s being tortured are not revealed. The film also says nothing about the torturing woman in her colourful dress.
In flashbacks, Agusta shows fragments from the past, but also in this case, little is revealed. The viewer has to share a certain uncertainty with the protagonists. But that is precisely the strong side of a film that was clearly made on a low budget. (GjZ)

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