Satan's Slaves 2: Communion

The family that fled its house at the end of the first film now lives in a high rise housing block in Jakarta. On a stormy night the lifts stop, the power goes, and the building is sealed off. The cult that has been following them is inside. Joko Anwar writes and directs. It follows his 2017 Pengabdi Setan, which was itself a remake of the 1980 Indonesian classic. The change of setting is the whole idea. The first film took place in an isolated country house; here the horror is built in a building holding hundreds of people, in corridors and stairwells. The crowd offers no safety. It makes it unclear who is a person and who is not. It was a first for Indonesian cinema: the first domestic film shot for and released in IMAX. The sound design is built to that scale and is the film's most effective instrument. It was the most watched Indonesian film of 2022 and raised the international profile of the country's cinema. Who it is for: viewers who like Southeast Asian horror and tension built out of a location. Who it is not for: without the first film the story will not open, and the sudden jumps in sound and image are used very heavily.