Takut: Faces of Fear – Review

Another one of those horror films that consist of smaller stories filmed by different directors, except this time around it is a film entitled Takut and is extremely scary. The stories range from a young man who is forced to cover up a crime after he accidentally kills his girlfriend’s young daughter, to a vengeful ex-girlfriend who hires a witchdoctor to punish the man who hurt her. Takut: Faces of Fear does tend to swim in the supernatural waters a bit and it does get to be silly at times.

The reason I don’t enjoy the stories with magic and CGI are because they had to be compressed into a short film because there were so many interesting elements and details. Rest assured though, that the six stories are pretty engrossing, suspenseful and interesting. However, in fairness they all have their own strengths and weaknesses so it is hard to grade films like these.

There always seems to be one story about food and cannibalism and this one is no exception.  The tension within this particular story was pitch perfect throughout the entire short and the beautiful Shareefa Daanish was impeccable as the psychotic Dara. It really opened my eyes to discover that there are very beautiful women in Indonesia! Almost all actresses in this film are gorgeous. After finishing Takut I was left with the distinct feeling that I paid more attention to the beauty of the actresses and their acting abilities then the actual scares of the film. Whether or not this is a bad thing can only be decided by you.

I would say that Takut is better than the big budget films of the same genre because of its high level in potentially interesting stories. There really wasn’t any stand out films for me here which some could view it as bad but when you have a star player on the team the rest of the film can seem like filler. I’m glad the mediocrity of the film was consistant because it built the illusion that the whole film’s short stories as a collective group were on an even scale. Dara is slightly more interesting and that’s mostly because of the stoic-sexy and evil man-eating chef performance by Shareefa Danish. If anything, track this film down for her performance.