Digital release movie review - Ghost in the Cell

Ghost in the Cell **** (out of 5) I must begin by advising that I almost passed up the offer to screen this Indonesian movie about prison violence, even with some supernatural elements and grim humor as part of the hook. I’ve just seen too many of these to expect any uptick from yet another entry. The high rating I’ve given this shows just how happy I am to have rolled the dice on this one. Even after decades of reviewing, there’s no way to spot a winner just from the title or premise. Sleepers like this justify all the non-magical frogs I’ve had to kiss (figuratively, of course) along the way.

Ghost in the Cell is about as literally on point as a title can get. Dimas (Endy Arfian), a feckless nerd is wrongfully sent to a prison full of violence, inflicted by inmates on each other, along with even more sadistic treatment from the guards and warden. Dimas was a journalist who’d been in the jungles of Borneo to write an expose on abusive practices by industrial exploiters of the natives and land. Someone is killed and posed in an exceedingly gruesome manner. He’s blamed, even though obviously too wimpy to have done anything like that. But when one pisses off the rich and powerful, justice falls off the table.

Once in jail, a few more gory killings occur with similarly lurid arrangements of the corpses’ body parts. There were already rumors that the place was haunted. Soon the inmates suspect that Dimas brought the malevolent spirit with him. One of them, “Six” (Yoga Pratama), claims to start seeing auras of different colors around the others. The theory is that the ghost feeds on anger and when anyone’s aura turns red, they need to calm down immediately, or become the next victim.

As unlikely as that premise may seem, writer/director Joko Anwar makes it thrive as a very dark comedy, with a few surprisingly wild, silly moments that make it stand out from others in the genre. And those who stream it primarily for the gore will be fully satisfied with the horrific dispositions the ghost crafts, as well as what the humans inflict upon each other. If you liked the comedic and yucky combo of films like Shaun of the Dead, this one takes both elements to entertainingly hyperbolic extremes.

No more details. Let it surprise you as it did me for maximum enjoyment.

(Ghost in the Cell, in Indonesian with subtitles, is available on Blu-ray and Digital formats as of 10/27/26 from WellGo USA.).