Ghost in the Cell (Frightfest 2026)

Perhaps it’s a marker of my strange sense of humour but I found my funny bone thoroughly tickled by Joko Anwar’s splatter-comedy Ghost in the Cell, where a ghost dismembers prisoners and turns them into grizzly art exhibits that nevertheless amaze in their ingenuity. Think of Smile 2 but directed by Frank Tashlin and you’re in the right ballpark. Anwar’s editing and camerawork constantly errs on the side of the slapstick gag, favouring a tactic of revealing a gruesome dismemberment with a spinning camera and intense music before cutting to the prisoners watching the sight silently. Until, of course, the shock breaks and they run around screaming in horror. It’s an old gag and Anwar uses it one too many times, but it’s a great way to puncture solemnity, a sensibility all too present in films about guys in prison. 

Anwar’s film is all about tweaking those conventions. The best moment of this playfulness comes in the form of a tracking shot across the men’s showers. It moves slowly across the muscular backs and buttocks of the prisoners while a grungy guitar and bass track plays, only for everything to cease at the appearance of a rotund prisoner, far removed from the perfectly-toned men we’ve been eyeing. The music stops, the camera rolls back on its track and the shot resets, only for the stomach to enter the shot yet again, to which the cameraman audibly mutters “shit” and the whole shot is scrapped. It’s the only meta moment in the film but it serves as a nice dig at prison cinema in a similar way to Prison-A-Go-Go!’s onscreen clock to the next women-in-prison shower scene, puncturing the leering self-interest that lives under the guise of gritty realism. The sight of prisoners repeatedly twerking to calm their aura and thus not be maimed is a further charming tweak, a destabilising of the machismo that would ultimately serve to attract the angry ghost. In effect, this is a film about prisoners surviving by staying in touch with their feelings, in sharp contrast to something like A Prophet and Malik’s slow process of dehumanisation. 

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Ghost in the Cell also functions as a commentary on Indonesian society, which is ranked 109^th of 182 countries for corruption according to Transparency International. The ultimate villain of the film is a man accused of illegal deforestation who lives in the lap of luxury in the notorious Block K. Here, he lives in a beautiful private cell complete with leather chairs and writing desk, all the while fawned over by the sycophantic head of the prison. Meanwhile our leads are a motley crew, some convicted of petty fraud but also a number who have been wrongly convicted, including wimpy Dimas, the reporter, and Anggoro, the robber. The satire, however, is not based on any specific Indonesian criminal (although a deforesting case like the Big Bad’s crime made headlines in 2023) and is sufficiently broad enough for audiences outside of Indonesia. 

The presence of wrongly convicted criminals languishing while the wealthy live in luxurious cells also ties nicely into the film’s interest in the consequences of destructive rage. At least two prisoners are killed because they are unable to let go of their anger, including one whose apparent calm exterior as a dance instructor masks his hurt at having his beloved dance studio bulldozed for a luxury resort. Being in touch with their feelings involves them renouncing their differences to work together in combating a shared enemy, a warm celebration of community that serves as a nice counter to the cynical corruption the film depicts Indonesia as being rife in.

What Ghost in the Cell has under its gore and slap-happy combat is a surprisingly kind heart for its wronged misfits that keeps the film on the right side of fun. Smile 2’s violence is exceptional, but its nihilism is perhaps too brutal for many. Ghost in the Cell, though, is very much a good time, even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing as well as it promised, yet it is destined to become a staple in any self-respecting cult cinema’s line-up.

ETHAN’S ARCHIVE – GHOST IN THE CELL