Javanese vampires, an undead tribe of immortal warlocks, a hard-boiled detective and an assortment of beautiful demons -- all of which stalk the twilight of Jakarta looking for blood, thrills and power in HBO Asia's original series Halfworlds. Premiering on Sunday at 9pm on HBO, the eight-episode show mixes Southeast Asian folklore with anime-cool and noir cinema, and it shows promise of a regional TV production that carries a dose of international appeal.
Halfworlds has been directed by Joko Anwar, one of Indonesia's best-known directors of feature films (his latest, A Copy Of My Mind, is a working-class love story premiering at Venice International Film Festival). In his first television series, Anwar renders a Jakarta cast in perpetual shadows (the series hardly has a daylight scene), and populates it with a young, good-looking cast playing different factions of "Demit" -- or demons in Bahasa -- who prowl the human world and wait for a supernatural event called The Gift that will bring their underworld to the surface.
"I drew on urban legends and folk stories in Halfworlds," said Anwar. "I mixed them with the style of an Indonesian horror film. Each of the Demits is based on Indonesian ghosts [but with a twist]."
The result is a noir fantasy horror that most Southeast Asian viewers -- Thais especially -- should detect points of cultural similarities. What Anwar does here is update the local ghosts' traditional, somewhat ghoulish fascination to give a slick, urban cool and pop-appeal. Halfworlds features a huge cast, and while the main character is Sarah (Salvita Decorte), a human girl who's drawn into the Demits' factional conflict, there are at least a dozen more demons with different supernatural powers. There is a "palasik", a banshee that feasts on foetuses (in Thai, we know it as Phi Phob); a "kuntilanak", a red-lipped seducer of men, in the school of bloodsucking sexy vampires (in Malaysia and Singapore, this female ghost is known as "pontianak"); and other species of half-monsters and voodoo doctors.
Observing all of them is Detective Gusti, in a long coat, his eyes weary in the fashion of Bogart or someone from Sin City. Gusti is played by half-Thai Bront Palarae, an actor based in Kuala Lumpur who can speak fluent English, Bahasa and Thai.
Anwar and his executive producer Erika North stress that what they aimed to do was "humanise" these demons, and thus they appear in the series in human form -- specifically as well-dressed, hipster-ish creatures who speak English, and who have to deal with their tribal spats as well as their personal anguish. It's clear that Halfworlds is designed to target the young Indonesian crowd with a cast of local big names such as Reza Rahadian, Adinia Wirasti, Tara Basro, Aimee Saras, Singaporean Nathan Hartono, and many more.
This Indonesian production will also be an interesting test case as to whether this mix of high sex appeal and a story that throws in several influences will be able to cross over into other parts of Southeast Asia.
Halfworlds comes in eight bite-sized 30 minute episodes. At the beginning of each, we see a short animated sequence, evoking a Marvel and DC Comics style, that narrates the back story of the Demit universe. The main story is however grounded in the gritty set-up -- smoky back alleys, inner-city dwellings, sinister buildings, a warehouse-style room of Sarah, the main character -- that at once resembles a real Southeast Asian city, Jakarta specifically, and a dark fictional fantasy. (The series was shot on a set in an island of Batam in Indonesia).
"We went to many corners of Jakarta and took a lot of photos and we created them in the studio [in Batam]," said Anwar. "So by looks, it's Jakarta. But we took it to another level by giving the series high-contrast and colour-saturated moodiness.
"In Batam, there are many buildings that look like those in Jakarta, only grittier. There was this huge building in the fish market; it was left by the Dutch colonials and there was a plan to modernise it in 1991, but it didn't happen. The result is this menacing building that looks like Jakarta after the apocalypse."
The Demit's bloody rampage involves martial arts fighting, black magic rituals and some grisly feedings (nothing exceeding television norms). And yet Anwar, whose last feature film threw the politics of the presidential election into a love story, finds a way to tease us with the reality of his country even as he revels in the devilish brooding of his demons. Sarah, the main character, lost her parents in "the riot", a clear reference to the May 1998 mass riots that led to the resignation of Suharto and ended military rule.
"We created a universe in Halfworlds, but we also want it to resonate with people," said Anwar, who co-wrote the script with Collin Chang. "It seems fitting to put real-life events in the story. Even though we don't explicitly say it's the May 1998 riots, people can sense that it is, and to me the incident serves as a good metaphor for the story in the show."
Halfworlds is the fourth HBO Asia original series, after Dead Mine, Serangoon Road and Grace.
"Our first four productions have established the brand," said North, the executive director as well as HBO Asia's head of programming and production. "We want to expand [our volume] and to work with a more diverse regional talents."
Halfworlds premieres this Sunday at 9pm on HBO.
