Macabre (known in its native language as Rumah Dara) is a 2009 Indonesian horror film directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel, known collectively as The Mo Brothers. An extension of their 2007 short film Dara, the movie was made as a homage to old-school slasher, splatter, and exploitation films, and is notable for being at the time the first widely released slasher from Indonesia in nearly three decades.
Married couple Astrid and Adjie are on their way to the airport, accompanied by their friends Alam, Jimmy, and Eko. After taking a detour to pick up Adjie's sister Ladya, they are stopped by a woman named Maya pleading for help in the middle of the road who claims to have been robbed.
Offering to give her a ride home, they are introduced to her family, consisting of her brothers Adam and Arman and her mother Dara. Little do they know that they are a family of cannibalistic serial murderers, and they are in for a night of mayhem…
Not to be confused with the death/thrash metal band of the same name.
Macabre provides examples of the following tropes:
- Final Girl: Ladya. Astrid's baby also survives.
- Gorn: The film is extremely bloody even by slasher standards to the point that it could also be considered a splatter film. Alam's death, for example, is particularly messy.
- Made of Iron: Compared to the others, Adam takes a ton of punishment before he dies. He gets stabbed many times, shot at point-blank range, and his whole body is set on fire before he finally gets killed by decapitation.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's a brief moment and easy to miss, but while the family are explicitly portrayed as merely extremely tough human beings, there are a set of old photographs of them found by one of the policemen searching their home dated as far back as 1889, possibly implying that they successfully extended their lifespan through their consumption of human flesh. Whether this is actually them or a case of Identical Grandson and Ancestral Name is never made clear. However, nothing else remotely supernatural is ever seen or hinted at, and by the end, the entire family is successfully killed, suggesting that they are in fact mortal.
- Older Than They Look: Maybe. If the photos are to be believed, all Dara's children could actually be in the elderly range, with she herself being 120, just two years younger than the oldest verified human being to ever live.
- Silent Antagonist: Arman does not say anything throughout the entire duration of the film, though it's unclear if he is unable to speak or simply chooses not to.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Invoked. Timo and Kimo stated that they intentionally cast actors who were not only normal-looking, but attractive, as the killers because they wanted to deviate from the common slasher formula of having either deformed or ugly/unkempt antagonists.
