Roh ("Soul") is Malaysian horror film directed by Emir Ezwan. Initially premiering at the Singapore International Film Festival on November 22, 2019, it had a wide release in Malaysia on August 6, 2020, and a worldwide release June 1, 2021.
In some unspecified time in the past, widowed Mak (Farah Ahmad) lives with her daughter Along (Mhia Farhana) and son Angah (Harith Haziq) in a small house deep in the jungle, with the nearest neighbors living in a village across the river that they rarely visit. As the kids attend to their chores, they encounter a disheveled young girl (Putri Qaseh) wandering aimlessly through the woods. While they do their best to take care of the girl (who they call "Adik", meaning "little sister"), the next morning she suddenly eats a raw bird messily, tells the family that they'll die before the next full moon, and slits her throat.
The family soon start seeing and hearing inexplicable things in and around their house, many of them involving apparitions of the seemingly dead Adik. They are also visited by two enigmatic strangers: an old woman named Tok (June Lojong) who lives up a hill even further into the jungle who gives them advice on how to dispel the evil encroaching on their home, and a hunter (Namron) who for unspecified reasons is looking for Adik (who the family deny ever meeting). The family becomes increasingly desperate as they try to figure out what to do and who to trust as the situation becomes even more sinister.
Not to be confused with the wrestling promotion Ring of Honor (commonly referred to by the acronym "ROH") or the anime film Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Also not to be confused with the 2020 animated film Soul, which has the same name as this film when translated to English.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Time Period: The story seems to take place in some pre-modern (possibly pre-industrial) era, but the sheer isolation of the characters deep in the forest, along with them wearing traditional Malaysian clothes that could be worn in any time period, makes it hard to pin down when exactly.
- Book Ends: The movie begins with Adik watching a burning building and ends with an undead Along burning her own home.
- Death of a Child: Adik stays with Mak and her children for barely a day before she suddenly slits her own throat after delivering a prophecy of their imminent deaths. Given her unsettling behavior up to that point, it's Played for Horror more than for tragedy. Done in a more typically tragic manner when Along kills herself by repeatedly smashing her forehead onto a metal protrusion in the floor and when Angah gets his throat slit.
- Driven to Suicide: Mak cuts up her wrists and bleeds to death after she finds and retrieves her son's body. Along may have also killed herself by smashing up her forehead, but it's implied to be the result of Demonic Possession rather than a true choice on her part.
- Menstrual Menace: At one point Along wakes in the middle of the night and walks to the entrance of the family's home, where we see blood trickling down her leg. Due to the family living in a time and place without sanitary pads or running water, the only way she can deal with the menses cleanly is by going out into the woods and bleeding onto the ground. This results in another frightening encounter with the ghost of Adik, after which a terrified Along hides among the trees — and when the hunter comes across her and brings her home, the blood smeared on her legs makes her mother Mak think the hunter assaulted her.
- Minimalism: There are only six characters in the film, no obvious special effects, and the only artificial set we see is the family's small, ramshackle home.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The ending has Tok holding a pot full of water that shows her true demonic appearance in its reflection.
