BETWEEN THE EXORCIST AND MYSTIC IN BALI

Ghostbusters was not first made in the world. In Hollywood we know the eldest movie of catching spirit is The Exorcist. Produced in 1973 and directed by William Friedkin, the film tells about the case of 12-year-old girl named Reagan MacNeill who possessed by devil spirit and eventually Pastor Father Karras and Father Merrin had to performed ritual expulsion of demons in order to help her.

The film was having many problems in its production, ranging from rejected by well-known directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, and even lead to disaster in the form of motorcycle accident that hit the son of the main cast and had to be hospitalized which brought the thought that the film was curse.

It turned out that this film achieved tremendous success in the screenings, it earned record revenues of more than US$ 441 million worldwide and entered as a nominee in Academy Award-winning two categories for Best Sound Mixing and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Exorcist was the first horror movie that managed to enter into an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

Ritual exorcist performing by priest

When the horror movie The Exorcist became the first Hollywood-themed ghost repellent, what about Indonesia?

Indonesia made its ghost hunting movie in 1981 under the title Mystic In Bali. Though it didn’t equipped by hi-tech tools as Ghostbuster but apparently Indonesia and Hollywood take similar ways to solve the spirit problem, which is religious approaches. The Exorcist with Christian ritual ceremony by relying on the name of Jesus Christ while Mystic In Bali the Hindu ritual that relies on the strength of Acintya. 

Cathy Kean, a young writer from the USA who’s fluent in Indonesia went to Bali to learn the secrets of the ancient occult of Leyak for the book she’s been writing. One night in the woods she meets a woman who is also a witch and adherents of Leyak cult. Cathy finally agreed to become her disciples and began to follow many strange and horrible rituals. I remember one scene that disgusts me, when Cathy and the witch teacher transformed into a snake and prey on mice. Early in the morning when she wakes up Cathy jump straight to the toilet and threw up carcasses of rats from her mouth.

Mahendra, a local resident who liked Cathy knows the plan of the witch, who wanted to change Cathy became slaves of blood sucking creature, which always bloodthirsty and devouring the baby from the local villages, in order to achieve immortality, finally asked for help to his uncle, I Wayan Jereg, a leader of local Hindus to stop the Leyak Sorcerer.

Eventually, the war broke out between the white force and the black magic, and audience were treated lots of strange and surprising scenes that refer to the legends of Indonesia as a woman who turns into a pig (Babi Ngepet), snakes (Snake phantom), and the figure of a human’s head that dates from her 

body and hovering around with fangs and a long tongue in the sky (Leyak).

The original version of Mystic In Bali are not distributed internationally in 1981 but we can be proud that this film became one of the cult film among the fans of horror movies internationally after circulating through the media pirated video, especially when it was released on DVD in 2003 by Mondo Macabro company.

Mystic In Bali might not had great achievement as The Exorcist but at least it catch the world’s attention with a variety of reviews, both positive (the western people finally knew that black magic could change humans into many forms of animal, not just wolf) or negative (some say its scenario was weak and some say they’re doing cheesy effects that couldn’t brought the sinister).

Beautiful Bali

However, whatever the critics are this merely shows that Indonesia was able to make a horror movie, and popularizing Leyak black magic from Bali was smart way to do it because global people might not know about Indonesia, but they do know Bali…and it's one of our beautiful islands.

Sunset In Bali