Anak Kunti: When Horror Found a Human Heart
Anak Kunti isn’t just another Southeast Asian horror movie—it’s a film that uses the language of ghosts to tell a story about loss, memory, and motherhood. Set in the 1990s, it follows Sarah, an orphaned santriwati (a student from a religious boarding school) who returns to her home village, Wonoenggal, to discover the truth about her mysterious origins.
Her mother had died during childbirth, a tragedy buried beneath whispers and unrest in the community. When Sarah returns, she finds that her presence stirs not only the living but also the dead—a kuntilanak (the iconic Indonesian female spirit), who may hold the answers she seeks.
The story unravels like a ghostly investigation—Sarah moving between faith and fear, village superstition and personal grief. Along the way, she meets figures like the authoritative Nyai Fatima, her loyal friend Azizah, and Mbok Darmi, a woman rooted in the village’s unspoken power. Beneath the supernatural horror lies a very human truth: that sometimes, the ghosts we face are the ones born of silence, guilt, and forgotten love.
The Buzz Before the Shadows
Even before the early 2025 release of Anak Kunti, the film was featured prominently in Indonesian media, and fans were enthusiastically discussing it. Horror is among the most highly regarded genres in the country, and it was anticipated that Anak Kunti was not going to be an ordinary horror film, as it would include cultural nostalgia, folklore, and emotional depth. The 1990s setting provided an authentic texture, along with a rural Indonesian context, where superstition was palpable alongside faith.
The marketing campaign signaled ambition, with premieres in several Southeast Asian countries and an advanced sound design with Dolby Atmos technology, as the production team sought to meet international standards for horror films. This was the first time the film industry anticipated an audience for a film that would bridge a long cultural gap, presented as a horror film.
As the marketing campaign unfolded, it was clear that this would not be a simple horror film, but one intelligent enough to engage with complex folklore, culturally intricate emotional states, faith, and the fear aspects of womanhood.
Faces Behind the Fear
Anak Kunti features an ensemble cast comprising both emerging talents and established names in the industry. Leading the cast is Gisellma Firmansyah, who plays Sarah, the young woman who is wrestling with a religiously motivated upbringing and a search for unadulterated truth. Her role required the type of vulnerability that could evoke the quiet strength of a daughter confronting the spirit of her mother, in addition to the secrets of her village.
As for the tragic and creepy Wati role, Nita Gunawan’s transition to the kuntilanak role was perfect. While the spirit is often seen as a monstrous entity, in this story, it is also a spirit that encompasses a lot of pain and sadness. Jajang C. Noer, who is a legend of Indonesian cinema, offers compression to her role, Mbok Darmi, as she offers emotional realism to the spiritual realism that the movie seeks to achieve.
Every actor brings their own background and life experiences into the role. For Gisellma, this was the first time she was going for something decidedly more dramatic, having previously been in much lighter roles. For Gunawan, who is a performer and a television personality, the role of the ghost brought a much-needed change in her much glamorised personality. She had to express grief and agony through immobilisation rather than words.
To minimize the emotional impact of its most terrifying scenes, the film’s director, Bambang Drias, and writer, Baskoro Adi, directly collaborated with the actors. Their focus wasn’t on vacant screams, but rather the screams of torment, the kind that leave an emotional scar.
Inside the Making: Between Faith and Fear
Anak Kunti’s production faced difficulties that resonated with its narrative. Recreating the 1990s setting required painstaking attention to the details to capture and emphasize nostalgia. Consider the old wooden houses, the rural roads, and the simple school uniforms of a pesantren. The production team even searched for authentic locations that simulated the atmosphere of that decade.
An additional innovative approach was the use of Dolby Atmos sound technology. The horror of a film lies in the sounds: the silence of the wind, a distant voice, footsteps creeping toward the door. The sound team was said to go to extreme lengths by spending an additional few weeks to compose and organize the ambient sounds to enhance the atmosphere.
The crew worked under spiritual caution as well. In Indonesia, some people pray for protection over movie shoots, along with spirit and legend offerings. For a movie that shadowed folklore and reality, prayers and offerings significantly aligned with the filming rhythm.
On set, the chemistry between the cast helped counterbalance the darker elements of the material. Actors would spend their breaks exchanging old and new jokes for the ease of their minds and spirits—especially when the scene was emotionally intense. Gisellma mentioned in one of her interviews that the possession sequence was particularly difficult because it drained her for days, a testament to how deeply the scene was performed.
The Film on Screen: Shadows of Love and Loss
Anak Kunti finally arrived in theatres. For the audience, it was something familiar, yet, hauntingly new. The scares worked, but the lingering quality sadness was unique. Sarah’s journey never was one of conquering evil. It was of reconciliation and understanding that her mother’s spirit, and her own, were tied by love. An identity that death couldn’t erase.
The film’s pacing provided an opportunity to immerse audiences in the village’s atmosphere. The kuntilanak is not seen as the villain; she is a remnant of sorrow that has been forgotten. The cinematography encapsulates this duality well—and in the daytime, there is a soft, almost ethereal light, while at night there is an all-encompassing, oppressive darkness.
International audiences were surprised that, in Indonesia, spiritual horror is largely a moral discourse. The focus of horror is not the supernatural, but the monstrous cruelty of other people, the type that turns women into ghosts.
Hype, Reaction, and What the Cameras Didn’t Show
The initial media hype turned out to be well-justified. Anak Kunti achieved both commercial and emotional results in Indonesia and Malaysia, and was also a success in the horror film community. The more seasoned audiences responded to the moral and maternal aspects of the film, while the horror community, of course, appreciated the technical aspects.
There were challenges, however. Sound mixing issues, for instance, contributed to the extended delays in post production. The pacing issues also sparked creative disputes around the kuntilanak’s backstory and its extent. The final cut’s choice to retrain and leave backstory elements unresolved was a controversial choice that energized audience engagement.
The bizarre occurrences during the shoot—flickering lights during night sets and some noises in the old village houses—made the film even more interesting. The cast saw them as signs of being able to tell powerful stories.
When the Screen Fades, the Story Stays
Anak Kunti succeeds, because it does not just aim to scare, it remembers. It remembers the separated mothers and daughters, the lost women of history, and the grief that clouds a soul. It was not a horror project for the crew and cast, but a meditation on how stories, much like spirits, endure through time.
Ultimately, Sarah’s confrontation with her ghostly mother metaphorically illustrates a nation’s unresolved discourse with its history. For the actors, the descent into those shadows confirmed their own search for it; a reminder that in cinema, as in life, even the darkest stories are a means of searching for love.
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