Writer: Florey DM

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Watch this if you liked: “The Blair Witch Project”, “The Fourth Kind”, “Paranormal Activity”

The Good, the Bad and the Haunted Building:

The filmmakers of "Bangunan" are looking to make something different. Unfortunately, the movie comes out right after "Villa Nabila" and "Puaka Balai Gombak", two other Malay movies that also utilise the real ghost stories concept and presented in a docudrama style. Regardless, the technique of filming with a shaky camera or using CCTV footage and interviews (all rolled into one like a stuffed sushi) seem passe now, as it will only draw the audience to compare the film to Hollywood productions such as "The Blair Witch Project", "Cloverfield", "The Dinosaur Project", "Paranormal Activity", "The Pyramid", and the list goes on. Yes, ever since "The Blair Witch Project" gave the found footage genre a boost in popularity back in 1999, everyone wants in on the 'motion-sickness-inducing' wagon. However, what filmmakers post-"Blair Witch" fail to take into account was that the movie succeeded because it was something different back then. Now, when everyone is doing the same thing and causing headaches to the audiences, there's no clear-headed audience left to appreciate their work.

The interviews and repeated insistence of the movie being fully based on true occurrences bring to mind of "The Fourth Kind", but there the similarities end; it differs in terms of visual. It is understandable that this movie would try to present its visual in a format as raw as possible, seeing that it is based on found footage and guerrilla shooting for the most part. But this does not give an excuse to completely abandon the visual style - a brightly lit possession scene does not make an audience quake in their seats; when the whole point of a horror movie is to make your audience shake like a leaf in a hurricane. There's a reason why lighting plays a big part in movies; it sets the mood, it creates shadows that will make the audience ponder if the darkness hides something sinister, even if it doesn't it will still mess with their minds, making them more immersed in the movie. This movie is also more talk than action, which can only be entertaining if the banters are witty. The last 10 minutes of the movie carry a big bulk of the horror in this horror film, though it is reminiscent of "Annabelle" (not the greatest horror movie to be compared to) in the way the furniture just loves to move on its own. Still the team has to be applauded for managing to create quite a scary ghost at the end there. Overall, this is a good movie to bring horror-beginners or children to (rated PG13...so adolescents?), sort of their training wheel for the genre.

Trivia:

Khir Rahman, Sein Qudsi and Aqasha originally planned to film another movie, "Garang", but changed track to "Bangunan" when the true stories roused their interest.

Best Watched With:

People who enjoy roller coasters - or getting dizzy from watching handheld footages.

Cinema Online, 02 February 2015