The Forbidden Door

 Gambir is a sculptor, tortured because of what lies within his specific kind of creations…pregnant women holding the aborted fetuses from his wife, Talyda (Marsha Timothy)! Talyda insists he does this because the sculptures fashioned from his talents seem to go for exorbitant prices, including one show at the end that completely sells every piece at the gallery. His agent insists he continues, knowing of the secret regarding the pregnant sculptures after one he bought broke, using this as leverage. Gambir’s torture doesn’t just reside with the fetus dilemma. He is seeing Indo script asking for his help from a little boy. He soon follows the kid’s bread crumbs to a company that offers rooms to clients with televisions that feature diabolical content not for the morally upright. One of the “shows” (perhaps a riff on reality television and our roles as peeping voyeurs who cannot resist) has a child under constant abuse from his berating mother and silent rage father (with volcanic outbursts that temper only to erupt again when the kid does the smallest things “wrong”). This child is who Gambir sees and receives written pleas for help. Gambir feels it his mission to save the child but learns from a friend, Dandung (Ario Bayu), that the little boy was “accidentally” killed by his mother. Is it a lie to keep Gambir from continuing to pursue the child? Dandung is a frequent visitor to the company that has the content he finds exhilarating. So there are basically three story threads going here, the forbidden door Talyda tells him not to open, the sculptures and aborted fetuses behind their “magic profit”, and the little boy needing help from abuse, along with the revelation that this place where the deviants can satiate their dark appetites has a camera recording the family throughout their mistreatment of their son.

I guess the first questions immediately asked are “What is the forbidden door of the title and what lies behind it? Let’s just say the door is more symbolic than literal, although there’s a door presented to us, discovered by this film’s lead, Gambir (Fachry Albar). The Forbidden Door (2009) is an Indonesian film I learned about on the imdb horror board, recommended by the board’s resident Asian film fanatic. You’ll be surprised how many cool Asian horror movies are on Youtube, this being one of them. It is a little long in the tooth, but that fantastic ending is worth waiting for…it’s a real blood bath. On Christmas night, no less. I will say that the twist involving the door Gambir must not open throws everything you have just watched on its head. It has one of the Wizard of Oz finales where the characters you have been following may not be exactly as they seem, emerging differently, with Gambir having seen them from a different perspective within his delusional mind.

I think what I liked best about The Forbidden Door was how unpredictable it was; I wasn’t quite sure how the loose threads of the film would congregate into the whole of the narrative concerning sculptor Gambir. I felt cast adrift because the film kind of carries you through the subplot with the aborted fetuses then drops us into the next subplot concerning the building (which is like a hotel for those with DeSadian tastes) with the televised parents from hell. Eventually, the threads start to append until the bloody massacre (with gushing throats sliced right at the jugular slowly) at the end allows Gambir to unleash all that pent up misery. Gambir is a sad sack. He’s always sulking, swiping across his hair from the eyes, tucking up his sliding glasses, and sullying around in a pitiable state of anguish. He’s in despair for his inability to say no to the sculptures that leave him in a state of pure self-loathing; he’s a cuckolded, pussy-whipped weakling that has allowed everyone around him to hold dominion over him. This is the Gambir of the film until Christmas, Bloody Christmas. His mother is an overbearing, dominant figure that shares her opinions and expectations of him whether Gambir wants them or not. His friends are always ragging him about how envious they are of his success but more independent and have attainted their individuality. That and Dandung is banging his wife. Yes, there’s that.

There are secrets hidden from Gambir that he miraculously attains from Voyeur Television, like how his mother is encouraging Talyda to screw other guys to get pregnant, the adulteries, and the agent and Talyda’s manipulation of him through a twisted deceit so he could continue to put out those best-selling sculptures. All of them just pop up one after the other; I think this is where you can see that there’s something amiss. It provides incentive behind the bloody supper table scene, the use of poison to numb those who have “wronged him”, while he finally unveils just how each person in his life hurt him. But the forbidden door opened ties the child subplot with everything else in the developing plot. A horrifying double homicide and suicide on screen before Gambir’s eyes might have inspired the bloody massacre, but the open door—that door Talyda warned him not to open—unmasks the truth about Gambir, the  curtains drawn, the revelation about how the family so grueling to him is closer to him that he could have ever realized.