Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Five people enter an abandoned house, deemed to be haunted, only to come face-to-face with the supernatural being occupying the space.
It’s a premise that almost every low-budget film have explored, starting with Sam Raimi’s classic 1981 The Evil Dead as well as the 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project.
Director Muzzamer Rahman revisits this plot in Takut Ke Tak, but he gives it a fresh twist and injects many LOL moments into the story. In that sense, Takut Ke Tak is really a comedy fare than a scary film.
It’s not without flaws, but enter the cinema hall with low expectations and you might end up having a good laugh for a short while.
Takut Ke Tak centres on five film students who must complete a movie in order to graduate from university. Trouble is, these five friends are not that adept at filmmaking, or storytelling, or acting, or cinematography, ... you get the picture.
When Abbas (Nabil Aqil) suggests they steal plots of other horror films and make them theirs, the other four – Yang Guo (Fabian Loo), Linda (Ika Nabella), Sivar (Arwind Kumar) and Amir (Han Zalini) – immediately agree.
After doing a hodgepodge research, they hastily go to a haunted house to shoot their film. Of course, they go way off from the intended script when they realise they are trapped in the house.
While the audience may think they know what to expect at some points – as there are a number of references to other horror films – Muzzamer includes the familiar elements to invoke laughter more than fear. Opposite to how Abbas wants to avoid horror movie cliches, Takut Ke Tak embraces them to good effect for laughs.
One of the best scenes happens minutes after the friends enter the house, involving a Chucky-like doll. And it’s a mischievous doll just like in the Chucky film. But its mischief is not gore, just a tool for a skit.
Likewise, there is a haunted hand that is abusive – much like the possessed hand seen in Evil Dead. Here it serves as a punchline.
As shown in the trailer, there is a long-haired female ghost that crawls out of a box – an obvious homage to the classic Japanese 1998 horror Ringu – again, it’s just a set-up for a joke.
At the same time, Muzzamer wisely chooses not to go with the over-used horror film trope. Takut Ke Tak doesn’t have the inter-cut scenes, usually used to create jumpscare moments for the audience, and it doesn’t rely on loud music to build the sense of dread.
While all of these are good, somewhere in the middle, the film makes the mistake of introducing a weird storyline concerning the spirits and the five main characters are pushed to the sidelines.
At this point, both the comedy and the horror take a serious dive into the land of the dull. Worse, the introduction of slapstick humour completely changes the film's tone.
What is even more unsettling is how a female character gets beaten by a group of men in a flashback sequence. Although the beating happens off camera, the scene is more offensive than funny.
It is these few silly and unnecessary things that spoil an otherwise entertaining film that starts well. Luckily, the pace picks up near the end to give the audience a couple of more surprises.
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Summary:
It’s not without flaws, but enter the cinema hall with low expectations and you might end up having a good laugh.
