While hardly a new topic within the genre, the horror of pregnancy has been tackled from major Hollywood productions “Rosemary's Baby” and “The Seventh Sign” to indie fare like “Devil's Due” and “Prevenge.” Even efforts from around the world, like the French “Inside” or Australian “The Clinic” have tackled the issue, which opens the door for Indonesia to go head-long into the subject matter with first-timer Ook Budiyono's new feature “Fetus.”
In the early stages of pregnancy, young mother Dinar (Jill Gladys) and her husband Randu (Reuben Elishama Hadju) are ecstatic to learn all's going well and to carry on with their lives as the day approaches. As she begins to get stressed out, thinking something's wrong with her, he decides to hire live-in nurse Susan (Rhesa Putri) to help care for her only for the attacks to continue and intensify. At his wits' end, he comes to find out from his neighbor Sukma (Meriam Bellina) that the ghost tormenting them was the spirit of her daughter who he left to be with Dinar and is seeking revenge for what happened between them. Armed with what they need to stop it, they manage to put an end to the horror but are soon faced with something bigger than they ever anticipated.
There was a surprising amount of positives in “Fetus.” The film works best with the enjoyable psychological mind-games that are played on Dinar. Preying on the fear all women who become pregnant experience where everything that happens around the house is an unknown entity out to get the baby or drive her insane, this one falls into that aspect rather well. Given that she obviously senses something is off about the house as her intuition tells her to check something that isn't there or hearing voices coming where they shouldn't, Budiyono creates a successful atmosphere early on that denotes something isn't right. As they keep intensifying and the common reaction is to calm her down simply for the sake of the baby, the paranoia it exploits offers up a lot to like as this brings us firmly onto Dinar's side to get to the bottom of what's happened at what should be the happiest time of her life.
Moreover, the change into much more intense antics afterward gives different energy and appeal to the film. Focusing on the fact that Dinar believes she's going crazy, seeing ghosts and spirits around the house or having objects disappear and reappear in different places, her mindset is altered into a state of distrust that ends up escalating her paranoia. Not knowing whether the ghostly voices coming from the crib are really there or if the ghosts are just hallucinations, makes sense that she would turn to the medium Sukma for advice on the subject. It's only when Randu begins to experience strange supernatural incidents that it comes full circle to believing her, which only adds to the general unease featured throughout the film. The change to getting him to believe also means the ghost attacks are far more intense and frequent, leading to the revelation about the purpose behind them and leads to the thrilling finale to stop her. The spirit attacks are brutal, energetic and quite chilling as a result, giving the film plenty to enjoy as a result.
“Fetus” does have some minor issues. The main problem is that so much of the film is reliant on the tired trope of the disbelieving husband not coming around to what's going on until way too late in the proceedings. As this makes sense to add to the growing suspense being built up, it never ends up coming across as anything other than gaslighting, whether it's intentional or not. As the disbelief and skepticism of the supernatural happening to the wife are always featured in these films, the use of it in ‘Fetus” comes off the same way intended or not. Granted, Randu does come around but it's only after several incidents have happened to him personally rather than believing it from the start and it feels cliched as a result. Some of the effects work here is slightly spotty at times as well, sometimes having the effect of drawing the viewer out of the scene or lessening the suspense instead. However, these issues are really all that stand out against the film.
A wholly enjoyable and entertaining effort, “Fetus” offers some fun ghost attacks and plenty of psychological intrigue even if there's a bit of reliance on cliches and tropes. It's worth a watch for those looking for a quick, easy-going ghost story or generally curious about the country's efforts to try out this particular trope.
