Sightlines · reception

How Grave Torture was received

2024 · Joko Anwar · Grave Torture on Sightlines

The arc

Dropped on Eid 2024 in a head-to-head Lebaran showdown with Badarawuhi di Desa Penari, it sold roughly four million tickets at home while critics crowned it the ambitious one of the pair — and its Netflix arrival turned a national conversation into an international one.

What’s debated

The fight is over the ending and the scares: is this Joko Anwar's boldest, most philosophical film, or a religion-and-doubt drama that forgot to be frightening?

Its footprint

In Indonesia it briefly made 'siksa kubur' — the Islamic concept of torment in the grave — dinner-table discourse, with a practicing-Muslim director insisting he was asking questions, not judging.

Where it stands

For cinephiles it slots into Joko Anwar's modern Indonesian horror run after Satan's Slaves and Impetigore — the divisive, big-swing entry people tell you to argue about rather than simply like.

Did you know? Joko Anwar has said he often writes his screenplays in cemeteries for the tranquility — fitting preparation for a film literally about what happens in the grave.