‘Jurnal Risa' Scares Without Steadiness
The Indonesian horror film Jurnal Risa is based on its namesake YouTube channel, which follows a familial team of ghost hunters as they communicate with the supernatural and capture their interactions on camera. The reality TV-style documentary series is a massive hit in real life, with audiences enraptured by the adventures of the Jurnal Risa team as they invite willing participants to haunted places to test their sensitivity to the supernatural. The film follows a similar premise but fictionalizes it in a mockumentary style, and the result is confounding. Though it aims for a chilling atmosphere, the plot moves at a stuttered pace that breaks tension too quickly. Without a steady rhythm, Jurnal Risa falls to pieces.
Risa Saraswati is the leader of the ghost hunting team, an austere woman who is the most sensitive to the supernatural and carries the deep weight of wisdom every time she's onscreen. She's positioned as the lead of the pack, but she has less screen time than the victim and real lead of the story: Prinsa. Prinsa is one of three participants the Jurnal Risa team brings to a haunted locale to test their mettle on camera. From the start Prinsa is bold, stating that she joined the experiment for fame. She notes that there is a ghost that Risa is so terrified of she refuses to say its name – Samex – and says the name over and over as a taunt. She gets her wish and is possessed on camera in a frightening show (that loses its luster when it is performed over and over again). For Prinsa, this is gold – she posts the video on YouTube and goes viral. After this, the Jurnal Risa team follows Prinsa to see her developments, none of which are enjoyable.
The entire film is captured in faux-documentary style, a mix of footage from the Jurnal Risa crew and cameras placed to document night-time stirrings, a la Paranormal Activity. Suspense is at its highest when captured directly through point-of-view when characters traverse through the dark with a phone or camera in their hand. When perspective is removed from the characters, the illusion of reality is broken, such as the lack of night-vision in the night-time footage. This is all to frame the primary scare factor: the possessions.
Samex continues to torment Prinsa after the first instance of haunting when Prinsa is initially basking in the glow of recognition. She is recognized in public and even speaks about her experience on a podcast. This contemporary element adds layer to the story, one directly tying to real-life viewers of the Jurnal Risa YouTube seriesand their plausible interest in having real-life brushes with the supernatural. This theme is lost as the film progresses, however, save for a direct call to the audience Risa delivers at the end. Prinsa's possessions begin to put her life in danger and the Jurnal Risa team must return to the source of Samex, a small village.
It is at the village that the bubbling scares reach a boiling point, and the Jurnal Risa team also faces apprehension rather than admiration. They starkly stick out, the surveilling and documenting nature of their team clashing with the grounded nature of the village. This doesn't stop the villagers from providing help though, and a terrifying ritual is begun to cast out Samex from Prinsa. There are some inventive scenes here playing with the line between the living and dead, which grows thinner as they delve deeper. But the climax is victim to the same issue as the minutes prior: over-editing and over-acting. Jurnal Risa abandons a fluid story for a style of scares that echoes reality. But just pummeling with scares isn't enough, there has to be a solid backbone for them to build upon, and this film lacks
just that.
