Director Of Indonesian Horror Motel Melati Uses Rain Shamans On Sets: "80-90% Of The Time" There's No Rain On Day Of Filming

Welcome to Motel Melati! You check in but don’t check out.

The Indonesia horror, now playing in cinemas, tells the story of a secluded losmen (or a lodge in Indonesian) in Java, run by its mystifying owner, Madam Melati (Alexandra Gottardo). There, she lures unsuspecting guests to her motel where they are confronted with their worst nightmares, never to be seen again.

The terror tale is written by Mike Wiluan, who co-directed it with Billy Christian.

Wiluan is no stranger to horror — he and Eric Khoo produced Folklore, the HBO anthology inspired by Asian superstitions and myths, and Darah, the gore-fest by Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto — but this is the first time he’s calling the shots as director.

Wiluan previously helmed episodes of the HBO 'nasi goreng Western' series Grisse as well as Buffalo Boys, Singapore’s submission to the 2019 Oscars in the Foreign Language Film category (later renamed International Film).

“What’s great about the horror genre that I began to realise is that you get to create worlds,” the Singapore-born Indonesian filmmaker, who’s also the CEO of media company Infinite Studios, tells 8days.sg over Zoom. “And in a studio, we’re able to build those environments and create the creepiness and change its tone as we want.”

Plus, horror has a universal appeal.

“Something that scares someone would inevitably scare the other 10 guys,” he adds. “It’s the same with action. If someone is thrilled, it’s most likely the others will be thrilled as well.

"But when you look at comedy, it’s more culture-specific and it’s a bit tougher to get people to laugh at the same joke. It’s the same with drama. Something that might be dramatic in one country that might not be so dramatic in another country, right?”

Here, Wiluan shares more factoids about his shriek-fest.

1. Get the folk out

After producing Folklore, Mike Wiluan wanted to adapt more Indonesian horror folk tales but was concerned they might be too local to appeal to audiences abroad. His solution? Anchored them in a “haunted house situation” — a la Psycho and American Horror Story, which happened to be his faves — and make them “more relatable”. “There’s been a couple of stories about haunted losmens in the middle of nowhere,” says Wiluan. “You would stay in one and you don’t know if the owners are axe murderers, what they’re hiding in the basement, or if the house has a [macabre] history?” Where’s TripAdvisor when you need it? And this brings us to… 

2. The Internet is down

Wiluan set Motel Melati in 1997 — the pre-smartphone era — because “social media was less prevalent and there’s a lot of more innocence”. “When you go somewhere, you’re not getting Yelp or Reddit reviews, or even YouTube,” he says. “We take it for granted today that anywhere we go, we’re always online, we’re always able to communicate, but what if we can’t?” Coincidentally, if you look up the history books, it's set in the same period as the series of sorcerer-killings in East Java, which scholars have likened it to the Salem witch trials in the 17th century. Interesting times.

3. Welcome to the House from Hell  

Instead of looking for an actual losmen, Wiluan built the title character’s exterior on the backlot of Infinite Frameworks Studios on Batam. “A lot of films don’t have the privilege of shooting on sets and have to use existing infrastructure, so they spent a lot of time doing it up and it ended up not looking as creepy,” says Wiluan. “So when we made the set, we wanted to kind of force the perspective a little bit.” In the end, he ended up with a lopsided house with a “Tim Burton-esque” quality, and like Psycho’s Bates Family House, gives off the heebie-jeebies vibes the moment you see it.

4. It’s a kind of magic

Growing up in Indonesia, it’s hard not for Wiluan to believe in the supernatural but after a while, “you desensitised to it”. Has he seen a bomoh trying to cure someone who’s cursed? Sure. “But sometimes it’s up hyped up in the movies,” he adds.  “But I’ve seen this stuff done all throughout my life, it’s just normal,” he says, matter-of-factly. It’s also normal for him to put aside some of the production budget for a pawang hujan (or rain shaman) during the rainy season. “They’re able to hold back the rain for a certain period, especially when you’re doing an action scene outdoors,” he says. “I would tell you, 80-90% of the time, there’s no rain on that day.”

Motel Melati (NC16) is now in cinemas.

Photos: Golden Village/Clover Films, HBO