Two newlyweds Adjie and Astrid, along with three of their best mates decide to have an interstate road trip as a last attempt to reconcile Adjie with his estranged younger sister Ladya. Their drive is, however, cut abruptly when they run into Maya, a strange girl who wanders aimlessly out of nowhere into their path. Maya introduces Adjie and friends to her courteous blue-blooded mother, Darah, an ageless enigma of a woman. Darah insists that they should stay for a feast. This is when the night turns into a crimson-hell for them where one by one, they are slaughtered. Everybody will bleed and the dark of night has never looked so red.

Some people take the term bloodbath very, very literally - like Timo Tjajanto and Kimo Stamboel (the Mo Brothers) who directed this Indon slasher with a script so dedicatedly soaked in blood, you'll have to check your clothes for stains when exiting the cinema.

"Darah" (internationally "Macabre") is an advatageous extension of a 2007 short by the same brothers, also starring Shareefa Daanish as Ibu Dara, a hollow-eyed, kebaya-wearing succubus whose preferred method of execution is by chainsaw. This image is the most marketable point of the indie flick; and it's no wonder then that she picked up some award for it (despite this performance being laughably one-dimensional) and upstaged Julie Estelle by appearing solo in the movie poster for Singapore's release.

As a matter of formality, the story is about a group of friends who decide to drop off a troubled young lady (Imelda Therinne) at her home, en route to Jakarta. Turns out the spooky colonial home houses a family who keeps a terrible secret and our lucky lot just walked right into the jackpot.

We at least can be happy that "Darah" differs from films of the same Indon ilk because it intentionally takes only token care of character development. It also boasts a remarkable prolonged climax, reminiscent of exploitation flicks of yesteryears where overkill is the order of the day. In terms of acting, "Kuntilanak" girls Julie Estelle and Imelda Therinne show nothing special while the rest of the cast get killed off just in time before they started getting really irritating. A wet t-shirt or two couldn't have hurt in a horror movie like this, but since we didn't get that, their uneventful, generic performances are particularly glaring. The paedophilic-looking, bespectacled killer (Ruly Lubis) and the Edward Cullen wannabe (Arifin Putra) are extra minions who have spin-off potential.

You can read that "Darah" is the first feature from Gorylah Pictures, a new genre label by Eric Khoo of Zhao Wei Films and Mike Wiluan of Infinite Frameworks, focusing on South East Asian horror stories. It's a very decent start for a low budget flick, so let's hope the next film will be even more entertaining.