In recent years the surfacing or re-surfacing film industries of South East Asia have consistently relied upon the production of horrors in order to conquer local audiences and concurrently hope for outlets on the international market. It’s an eminently economical choice, determined by low costs of production and easily quantifiable revenues, due to the sizable number of hardcore fans of the genre. But horror also shapes up as a territory sometimes allowing artistic experimentation and - just because of the limited economical risks - giving more space to the up and coming new generations of filmmakers. It’s exactly the case with Chermin, an illustrious specimen of the plentiful new wave of horrors currently impacting theatres in Kuala Lumpur. A film that is also remarkable as a rather unusual case of a woman-directed horror coming from a Muslim country. Chermin (“The mirror”) is in fact the first feature from Malay filmmaker Zarina Abdullah, who writes, directs and edits her film.
And indeed Chermin comes up as a psychological horror nurtured nurtured with very feminine obsessions and sensitivity. One night, young Nasrin (Natasha Hudson) is driving home on a dark countryside road, when the sudden and terrifying appearance of a ghost makes her lose control of the wheel, leading to a disastrous crash. Miracolously surviving, the girl finds herself disfigured by a huge scar on the right side of her face. Although her caring boyfriend Yusuf (Farid Kamil), with whom she was already making wedding plans, asks to see her again and again, Nasrin always denies herself, fearing he might not love her anymore. Then, when Nasrin’s mother brings to the girl’s room an antique mirror found among her dead husband’s old stuff, Nasrin’s behavior becomes increasingly eerie and bizarre. Both her car accident and her growing possession actually stem from an age-old family curse: it is in fact the vengeance of Mastura (Deanna Yusoff), the first wife of ancestor Hassan, who had married her only because of an imposition from his family. Refusing to share the conjugal bed with her, Hassan led to the rise of rumours about Mastura being barren, and could eventually take Zahrah as his second wife. Fearing of being abandoned and feeling marginalized, Mastura fell into alienation, and started practicing black magic.
Chermin displays its more original and convincing moments in the chapters setting up the turn towards horror: first, lingering over the trauma of Nasrin, who has lost her beauty and is afraid of also having lost Yusuf’s love; then, depicting Mastura’s trauma, an emblem of oppressed women, victims of iniquitous social conditions. The comparison between the love hardships of the two women in the present and the past sparkles food for toughts, and reveals a provocative short circuit, as the pains of the two protagonists seems to mostly stem from the words and acts of other women...
Abdullah’s mise en scène is remarkable in its refined formal inventions, aptly playing with point-of-view shots and long takes. In the second half, the film gathers up the habitual thrills and chills, with a use of computer graphics at times feeling gratuitous, and a climax that openly recalls William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, with an Islamic exorcism in place of a Christian one.
A pop star in the Nineties, Deanna Yusoff, who already appeared in Anna and the King and here plays Mastura, also sings the theme song of the film, Aku Patut Membenci Dia (“I should hate him”).