Gambir (Fachry Albar) is a fashionable mother fucker, all art galleries and high times… but all isn’t as it seems with our hero. See, awhile back, he and his girlfriend (later wife) Talyda (Marsha Timothy) went and made a baby out of wedlock, and since her parents would never approve, it’s soon abortion o’ clock, and the resulting fallout from that leaves Gambir weak in the crotch… permanently.
None of this puts a damper on his art career however, and soon Gambir’s life casts of pregnant women contain extra baggage, namely aborted fetuses… for fuck’s sake dude…
Anyway, the meteoric rise in Gambir’s career is matched only by his descent into rather poor mental health, and with the looming threat of his dark secret being revealed, he becomes caught up in the sick goings-on centered around the Herosase building… a structure who’s walls hide the viewing displeasure of multiple television screens that “treat” the viewers to scenes of extreme violence and child abuse.
This encounter expands Gambir’s downward spiral, and the strange red door in his home that Talyda tells him never to open isn’t helping matters any either…
I’ll tell you one thing writer/director Joko Anwar’s The Forbidden Door is: it’s exactly what you would get if Alfred Hitchcock directed Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood with a last minute script polish by Takashi Miike. If that doesn’t wet your wicked whistle than you folks are reading the wrong fuckin’ column!
Anwar brings to bear a stylish presentation perfectly inline with the posh elite that populate the narrative, and even when things get a bit out of control… okay, completely batshit out of control (and a tad tacky… which is never, ever a negative) it’s still all so damn pretty to look at from the actors, to the locales, to the gore… and the absolutely jaw-dropping animated title sequence that evokes the work of master artist Saul Bass is a true showstopper!
It has to be said that depending on your tolerance for simulated, yet brutal, child abuse and abortion, your mileage with The Forbidden Door may vary, as this film really holds nothing back, and as the plot takes it’s twists and turns the sequences grow ever more grim… but why watch a horror film if not to be horrified?!!
One thing that won’t leave you horrified are the bonus features Severin have included on this special edition Blu-ray the likes of which include: an audio commentary with Anwar (though it’s more of a visual affair as it’s in In Indonesian with English subtitles) followed by an interview with the same, a selection of deleted and extended scenes (which feature optional commentary by Anwar), a “behind the scenes” featurette, more footage from the sinister screens of Herosase, a poster and still gallery, and a collection of trailers.
Slick, sick, and all manner of freakin’ brilliant; Joko Anwar’s The Forbidden Door is an absolute ball smasher of a fright flick filled to the brim with all manner of sweet, sweet nastiness!
