Common Sense Media Review
By Brian Costello
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Blood, gore, scary imagery in entertaining horror movie.
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Suzzanna: Buried Alive
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What's the Story?
IN SUZZANNA: BURIED ALIVE, title character Suzzanna (Luna Maya) and Satria are a happily married couple living in a luxurious mansion with three servants. They have just received the good news that Suzzanna is pregnant. But when Satria, the owner of a prosperous factory, must travel abroad for business, things take a terrible turn. Four of Satria's employees, frustrated over being poor, hatch a scheme to break into Satria and Suzzanna's mansion while Suzzanna and the servants are away, steal some valuables, and improve their financial standing. But when Suzzanna returns home as the thieves are in the house, the four men, panic-stricken and not very bright, kill Suzzanna. Or, they think they have, but she's still alive when they start to bury her in the back yard. However, when the servants return, Suzzanna is in the house, and aside from acting a little strange and distant, it seems as if nothing has happened. But what the four thieves soon discover is that Suzzanna has become a sundel bolong -- a ghost who was once a pregnant woman -- the angriest and most wrathful of spirits. After consulting with a shaman, the four men must find a way to stop Suzzanna and keep Satria from finding out what happened to his beloved wife.
Is It Any Good?
This is a creepy Indonesian horror movie that manages to balance the scares with a kind of goofy kitschy charm. In other words, it's not as dark as other horror movies centered on avenging demons and the evil side of the spiritual realm. As Suzzanna, the doting pregnant woman who has been murdered by a quartet of bumbling would-be home invaders who is resurrected as a ghost determined to get revenge, Luna Maya's insane cackle is unsettling and thoroughly entertaining -- the stuff from which nightmares are created. It's the kind of cackle that will reverberate in the minds of audiences for weeks after viewing.
And yet, for the darkness of the story, Suzzanna: Buried Alive manages to be escapist entertainment without leaving the audience to spend the rest of the day brooding on overdone horror themes like "the dark side of human nature." The romance and melodrama, intentional or not, come off like the most mawkish of telenovelas, and the secondary characters are almost all goofy and two-dimensional, and none of that affects the quality of the movie overall. If anything, it adds to the fun of the experience. That said, this is the kind of horror movie one can enjoy for its own sake, and for all its scares, it doesn't take much effort to remind yourself and those around you that, "It's just a movie."
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about horror movies. How does Suzzanna: Buried Alive compare to other horror movies in terms of story, violence, imagery?
What were some of the ways in which the movie tried to scare the audience? Did it rely more on blood and gore, or on psychological suspense?
How did the movie use humor to perhaps soften the darker elements of the movie?
Movie Details
- In theaters : November 10, 2018
- On DVD or streaming : April 3, 2019
- Cast : Luna Maya , Herjunot Ali , T. Rifnu Wikana
- Director : Rocky Soraya
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Horror
- Topics : Fantasy
- Run time : 125 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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