Impetigore (Indonesian: Perempuan Tanah Jahanam, lit. 'Woman of the damned land') is an 2019 Indonesian horror film written and directed by Joko Anwar.
The film follows struggling working class Maya, who is down on her luck after she and her best friend Dini quit their jobs in tollbooths and started a small store after Maya was attacked by an unknown man, calling her for another name and asking about her father. Learning that she may have some inheritance in a far away village, she and her friend decide to go there to see, only to learn the village holds a terrible curse and a grudge against her family.
Tropes
- Big Bad: Misni is both the real leader behind the villagers violent attack on Maya and Dini, and the one that started the whole thing, being the one to curse Maya to be born skinless.
- Body Horror: Due to the village curse, any child born there since the killings was born with no skin, doomed to live in pain and misery for life.
- Deal with the Devil: Ki Donowongso struck a deal with the devil to kill and skin three girls in exchange for healing the affliction of his own daughter. Unfortunately, this also had the side-effect of causing all the kids in the village since then to be born without skin too.
- Downer Ending: Maya is horrifically traumatized from the events of the town, no closer to escape poverty, and her best friend is dead. The small village sees new life breathed into it thanks to the lifting of the curse, but is immediately attacked again by a new curse, now Misni's ghost causes miscarriages and eats the fetuses.
- Folk Horror: The movie is set on a small Indonesian town and utilizes elements of the Country's folklore.
- Knight Templar Parent: For the sake of his daughter's health and happiness, Ki Donowongso murdered three innocent children and made a deal with the devil.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Maya learns that her father is actually Ki Saptadi, who had an affair with her mother.
- Make You Watch: Ki Saptadi uses his mother's knife to kill himself in front of her. Something so horrifying that causes her to kill herself right after.
- The Man Behind the Man: Ki Saptadi is the village leader, but all his ideas come from his mother, Nyi Misni, who is both more ruthless than him and knowable of The Dark Arts.
- Mercy Kill: Babies born without their skin are drowned right after birth so they will not experience the pain of living like that.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Nyi Misni. In an attempt to keep the secrets of the elder house quiet, she erased the memory of her son that he was having an affair with the house head's wife and knocked her up, and cast a curse so the baby would perish. Unfortunately, the curse caused the baby to be born, but with no skin, and her father would try to undo this by making a deal with the devil that caused the curse in the town.
