Ada Hantu reinvigorates hope for Malaysian horror comedy

 

The poster might be a spoof of typical campy Malaysian horror comedies, but the movie does it right. (Image courtesy of mStar)

In his directorial debut, Hairul Azreen (Wira, Pasal Kau) delivers a satisfying production for viewers this pandemic season. There weren't many things that we could find wrong with this movie, or complain about for that matter, only because watching it till the end kind of explains the reasons for a lot of the details. 

When Ada Hantu released its trailer, we were honestly kind of sceptical about the project. However, when we saw that Adrian Teh was still involved in the production, we calmed our anxious expectations and decided to await the release before forming an early observation. 

Reason being, we've been a fan of the Adrian Teh 'Frat Pack' since Paskal as he continues to hire Hairul Azreen, Henley Hii, Sophia Albarakbah and Theebaan for more projects he was involved in, and honestly, we've thoroughly enjoyed them.

One fourth of the Adrian Teh Frat Pack. The other three make an appearance later in the movie. (Image courtesy of kakimuvee.net)

 

Ada Hantu focuses on Aliff (Zahiril Adzim), a Youtuber that gets persuaded by his friends Talha (Hairul Azreen), Sasha (Elvina Chua), Bariah (Shikin Kamal) and Jimmy (Nafiez Zaidi) to celebrate his birthday at a haunted house to look for evidence of the supernatural and also to create content for his channel. Once there, Aliff, being the smart mouth and sceptic that he is, starts experiencing haunting activities which makes him a firm believer in otherworldly forces. 

There are two main plots to this movie and a sub-plot at the end, but both main storylines were told with satin-silk smoothness; from the plot progression to the script, there were hardly any hiccups as the editing was done intelligently. 

In terms of the script and dialogue, they weren't overly done and does well to keep things casual for the entire movie while the storyline was pretty well written and delivered effortlessly by some pretty chill acting. 

Talking about the acting, we'd also like to hand it to Zahiril Adzim, a veteran of the Malaysian film industry, for his impeccable comedic timing and natural talents in front of the camera which was what made the scenes funny and easy to watch as the delivery of his lines and ticks were all delivered smoothly, nonchalantly and professionally. Shikin Kamal provided the rest of the flow for the scenes with her dialogue and acting, while the other three actors, Hairul included, supported from the back. This isn't to say that they were bad, but there was an imbalance to the ratio of scenes shared by all five actors.

In terms of the production value for Ada Hantu, it's not exactly a big-budgeted flick, but what it lacked in over-the-top, poorly executed special effects that a lot of the Malaysian horror movies rely too heavily on nowadays, it made up for with a clean-cut storyline that made sense with the budget that they had. 

🐋 Ahoy, Me hearties! There be spoilers ahead 🐋

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

The hauntings were all an elaborate ruse by Bariah, Talha, Sasha and Jimmy to teach Aliff a lesson. After Aliff released a Youtube reaction video of him watching a comical interview with a Pocong, his friends decided to subtly persuade him (spamming his video with comments) to spend a night in a haunted house.

The house, which actually belonged to Bariah's family, was set up to look haunted with the help from four of Bariah's other friends (Dafi Ismail Sabri, Sophia Albarakbah, Theebaan and Henley Hii). They concocted a plan which was carried out in the middle of the night involving hover boards, cheap make up and halloween costumes (thus the poor designs, which makes sense). However, things go awry as Aliff has a chandelier fall on his head, killing him.

Police officers arrive the next morning and during the investigation, that's when Bariah explains their side of the story. 

🐋YO HO! Safe shores we go 🐋

Zahiril Adzim's acting is so silky smooth in this flick (Image courtesy of malaymail.com)

There are more pros than cons to this movie. In fact, we can't find a con at all. There were a few times when a dialogue was delivered badly, but it was small and insignificant to the point that you couldn't even really notice it until you watched the movie a second time around with the sole intent of looking for flaws. 

All in all, Asian Does Horror gives Ada Hantu 👻👻👻👻 out of five ghost emojis for a job well done to first time director Hairul Azreen. 

You can catch Ada Hantu on Disney+ Hotstar.