Fantastic Fest 2024: ‘Respati’ loses itself from a bloated runtime

Too many horror movies push two hours (or more) when 90 minutes would suffice. Stories often become muddled and lost beneath rushing creative tide waters that detract from deep messaging and stronger character arcs. With Sidharta Tata’s Respati, a bloated runtime zaps the energy from the room and drains what would otherwise be a thrilling ghost story about a young teen’s survivor’s guilt over his parents’ tragic murder. Featuring mood-dripping cinematography and a killer score, the film contains more than a few parts that just work – too bad it all loses steam as it heads into the climax.

Respati (Respati (Devano Danendra) suffers from terrifying nightmares and severe insomnia. He wanders zombie-like through his life. Ever since his parents’ murder, he can’t pick himself up out of his cloudy depression. His grandfather (Liek Suyatno) does the best he can to get Respati (or Re, for short) the help he needs. After a doctor’s appointment, Re starts using a bottled serum to assuage his anxiety-riddled brain. But his nightmares continue – stretching (and snapping) reality and fantasy like rubber bands.

Dreams come fast and furious, and sometimes, you just don’t know what’s a dream and what’s not. Punctuated with one of horror’s best scores, the pulsating rhythms are particularly skin-slicing, and the sequences are guaranteed to climb inside your body. After learning about Sukma (Ratu Felisha), a witch-turned-demonic entity once vilified and murdered by villagers of a neighboring town, Re befriends new girl Wulan (Keisya Levronka) and enlists the help of his best friend Tirta (Mikha Hernan) to slay the monster.

Brilliant moments of sheer terror are gutted with mediocre plot points that drag the film down. As horrifying as many of Re’s dreams are, too many begin to feel repetitive without a clear rhyme or reason to be included. There’s no mistaking Danendra’s emotionally charged performance; he layers his character with depth and a great understanding of how grief can wreck the body and mind. But there’s only so far he can go with the material before he, too, sinks into a muddy abyss of dull, tepid ideas.

Respati, based on a best-selling novel by Ragiel JP, fails to generate enough interest or intrigue to warrant even one viewing. As Re draws closer to killing the nightmare demon, which requires either a beheading in the dream realm or a body burning in the real world, there proves to be no actual stakes to the story. Instead, Re and his friends flounder, kicking and screaming until the stale hopeful ending.

Respati just does so little to warrant its existence. The witch, once revealed, features a caricature of a creature design. It’s neither scary nor interesting. In fact, it comes across as silly and thoughtless. In Re’s quest, body mutilations pepper the film, and therein is where it truly shines. In one particularly unsettling sequence, Wulan, who has an obsession with the dream world, offers herself as a conduit to the witch. As her body bends and cracks, her eyes turn white, and her body bleeds of all life. It’s within these moments that Respati does earn its stripes, but they’re so far and in between that you soon forget them.

It’s unfortunate. The film contains scenes of incredible ideas that simply become bogged down with a sluggish viewing experience. Maybe another few passes on the script would have helped trim the fat. But as it stands, Respati is lackluster, at best.

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