Kang Solah: Kang Mak x Nenek Gayung (2025)

Score: 6 / 10
Category: Movie
Platform: Netflix

One-line verdict

A horror-comedy that leans more into silliness than scares — fun, twisty, but slightly messy as a sequel.

Why I watched this

This was my first Indonesian movie. I’ve heard good things about Indo horror, so I decided to give it a shot. The trailer looked funny, so I went in blind — not realizing it was actually a sequel, and that the previous movie was itself a remake of a Thai horror-comedy.

That context matters. I didn’t have it.

Story & Structure

The premise follows four soldiers returning from war. The lead is excited to reunite with his love, but when he gets back to his village, something feels off. The people aren’t as welcoming as before, and the tone slowly shifts.

Although marketed as horror, this leans heavily into comedy. The background music does the heavy lifting for tension, but the comedic beats overpower the scares. It’s more entertaining than frightening.

The twists were surprisingly frequent for a comedy. Some I genuinely didn’t see coming. But because I didn’t know this tied back to an earlier film, parts of it felt like I had missed key context. Certain references and rule setups clearly belonged to the previous entry.

That weakens the standalone experience.

And worse — from what I later learned, it doesn’t fully respect some of the rules set in its own earlier movie. That’s something I’m sensitive to.

What worked

• The horror-comedy balance is mostly fun.
• Performances were solid, even if the cast was unfamiliar to me.
• The tone reminded me of 90s Stephen Chow absurdity and the silliness of the Scary Movie franchise.
• Background sound design was effective in creating tension when needed.

Also interesting culturally — being an Indonesian film from a predominantly Muslim country, I was surprised by how liberal some of the costuming was. In Malaysia, this likely wouldn’t pass.

What didn’t

• Being a sequel without clearly signaling it.
• Plot elements that feel incomplete without prior knowledge.
• Inconsistency with previously established rules.
• Slight pacing drag if you don’t know what to expect.

It occasionally feels longer than it should.

Final thoughts

As a first Indo film experience, I enjoyed it.

It’s silly. It’s twist-heavy. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.

But structurally, it loses points for sequel dependency and rule inconsistency.

This sits at a firm 6 / 10.

If it respected its own setup more cleanly and stood stronger as a standalone, it would’ve reached 7.

Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing a third or fourth installment — the tone works.