Why Indonesia’s horror films are booming

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. JOKO ANWAR had a bleak childhood growing up in a slum in North Sumatra in Indonesia. “I was worried I might get kidnapped by Wewe Gombel," he says, referring to a female ghost in Javanese mythology known for abducting children.

But Mr Anwar’s childhood tribulations helped him cultivate a career as a director of horror films. His breakthrough came in 2017 with “Pengabdi Setan" (“Satan’s Slaves"), about a family haunted by the death of their mother. His most recent blockbuster “Siksa Kubur" (“Grave Torture"), about two siblings whose parents are killed in a suicide-bombing, was released in April.

And a recent Netflix series, “Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams", released in June, became the first Indonesian series to make the top ten shows in America. Mr Anwar’s work is part of a broader trend. The number of Indonesian horror movies produced in a year has surged from fewer than five in the 1990s to over 40 by 2018.

After a brief decline during covid-19, the industry has picked up; 50 horror films were produced in 2023 (see chart). One of these, “KKN di Desa Penari"—based on a viral thread on X, about a purportedly real experience of students in a spooky village—became the highest-grossing film in the country, taking $25m at the box office and selling 10m tickets since its release in 2022. That year, nine of the 15 best-selling Indonesian films were horror.

Why is Indonesia such a horror-movie powerhouse? It is partly down to the country’s rich folklore. “We live very close to these things in our daily lives," says Ekky Imanjaya, a film specialist at Binus University in Jakarta, the capital. Parents often use ghost stories to make children behave.