Curse of the Seven Seas, or Santet Segoro Pitu, is an Indonesian horror film streaming on Netflix that makes for a disappointingly funny experience, since it’s meant to make you feel scared of the ghosts and vengeful spirits on screen, not chuckle at the horrible CGI effects. The plot is about a family living in the Javanese city of Semarang in Indonesia, who suddenly find themselves afflicted by terrible curses and frightening black magic. Ardi, a young man with great spiritual prospects, must get to the bottom of the black magic rituals being conducted against his family and protect them before it is too late. Overall, Curse of the Seven Seas might just be one of the silliest horror films you’ve watched in a long time and should be skipped unless you have a particular taste for bad, unintentionally funny horror films.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
Curse of the Seven Seas begins in 1970, at the city market in Semarang, Indonesia, where customers flock to a grocery store run by a man named Sucipto, making it evident that his business is booming. Right opposite his shop is another establishment selling similar products, and it is run by a man named Sardi, who happens to be Sucipto’s brother-in-law. But unlike his relative, Sardi is not having such a great time with his business, for nobody seems interested in buying from his shop. Nonetheless, he strives on, trying to sell his products, and is evidently quite jealous of Sucipto’s success. At the end of the day, Sucipto locks up his shop and leaves for the local hospital with bundles of cash on him, as he has to pay for his young son’s treatment at the earliest.
Sucipto and Marni’s eldest child, their son, Ardi, has been suffering from some kidney ailment because of which he has to undergo an expensive surgery. Although Sucipto needed a few days to gather the money, he finally gets hold of it and pays for the treatment, and Ardi’s surgery is carried out successfully as well. However, Ardi develops a new problem despite his kidneys getting treated, for he starts seeing figures and spirits that are invisible to others, and a spiritual healer, named Rustam, has to be consulted by the family. Rustam reveals that the surgery has somehow opened Ardi’s third eye, which is allowing him to see all the supernatural beings that exist in the world, and although the third eye can never be closed again, the scope of its vision can be narrowed. Rustam carries out this spiritual surgery of his own, ensuring that Ardi will be able to see only those spirits that want to be seen, while the rest will remain invisible to him.
13 years later, Ardi is a young man studying in college and living a happy life with his younger siblings, Syifa and Arif. But their happiness does not last very long, as Sucipto finds a small black bundle outside his shop while closing up one night, and opens it to find a small skull and a few bones inside. Not realizing that this is an indication of black magic being performed against him, he ignores the matter and tosses the bundle away before returning home. That very night, Sucipto has a haunting nightmare and then throws up blood and worms the next morning, before falling terribly sick and eventually becoming bed-ridden.
How dangerous is the curse against the family?
The extent of the danger that Sucipto and his family face is evident right from when he is first afflicted by it and throws up worms. It is his youngest son, Arif, who is targeted next, as the little boy returns home from school one day to find a similar black bundle left at the courtyard by someone. Much like his father, Arif also innocently picks it up and opens it to find bones and a skull, and he is instantly chased by some supernatural shadow, which leaves him extremely sick and bedridden. Even 13 years back, when Ardi had fallen sick, Sucipto had found a similar bundle outside of his shop but had ignored it completely. Now that the family realizes that they have been cursed by someone and are being subjected to black magic, it is far too late to do anything.
The first victim is ultimately young Arif, who falls sick and almost prophetically blesses his older siblings to be happy, as if he knows that he is about to die. Incidentally, Arif did have a keen interest in the supernatural and the religious ways to deal with spirits, but nothing seems of any use when he is attacked. After weakening him earlier, a large shadow attacks the boy and makes him bleed from his ears and eyes. Soon, something rips Arif open from the inside, and the little boy dies an extremely painful death. As there is nothing they can do about the situation, and also because Curse of the Seven Seas is a mindless horror film that needs to move from one plot point to another, the family buries Arif and goes back to living their ordinary lives, although the curse still keeps haunting them.
Soon after, they consult Rustam once again, who tells Ardi to stay away from any bundles or totems, which seems more like common sense than spiritual guidance. However, before he can pass on this message to his mother, Marni spots a similar bundle outside their house and immediately picks it up, despite possibly knowing that her husband and child had fallen sick after touching such packages. Therefore, a spirit starts chasing Marni as well, and eventually it is seen slinking into her sleeping body. This supposedly allows the spirit to take control of her body, and so it quickly starts ripping Marni apart as well, killing her in the most gruesome manner. Ultimately, Sucipto’s family loses two members before anything can be done to stop the curse, while he himself remains sick and unresponsive, on the brink of dying.
Why was Sucipto’s family being targeted?
The only real suspense in Curse of the Seven Seas is regarding the question of why exactly Sucipto’s family was subjected to this horrific torture, and who was keen to hurt them. The answer, at first, seemed easy, since Sucipto’s rival shopkeeper, Sardi, seemed like the one who had plotted against him out of jealousy. Although Sardi is related to the family, and Ardi and Syifa endearingly call him uncle, he seems too obsessed with how Sucipto’s grocery store was such a huge success, while nobody shopped from his store. However, there is a clever twist (I’m immensely overexaggerating here) as Sardi is not the real antagonist, but it is another shopkeeper at the market, named Wicak. When Ardi goes to confront his uncle one night, Sardi sits him down and tells him the whole story behind the curse destroying their family, and this is when the real truth is revealed.
Back in 1970, it was Sardi who had helped Sucipto set up a shop at the market and then taught him how to be a good trader and treat his customers properly. Sucipto started earning money honestly until he noticed a small bundle of cloth in front of his shop one day, which contained some strange items like some dried leaves and nails. Realizing that the other shopkeepers were trying to hurt Sucipto’s business with the help of black magic, Sardi suggested that he ignore all such matters. But the totems kept appearing, sometimes in the form of bundles of cloth and at other times as dead animals left to rot inside or close to the shop. The efforts seemed to pay off, as Sucipto lost all his customers, and he grew very desperate to earn money, since Ardi had fallen sick at this very time, although his sickness was unrelated to the curse. Therefore, Sucipto found and consulted a shaman named Mbah Di, who helped him get back his customers and earn the money required for his son’s surgery.
Mbah Di turned out to be more powerful and adept than the shamans the other shopkeepers consulted, meaning that Sucipto soon misused her powers to snatch away customers from everyone else at the market. As a result, he made even more enemies, and the shopkeeper named Wicak sent a curse his way, which soon affected Marni’s health. The woman suddenly started suffering from extreme abdominal pain, and when the doctors took a look, they realized that there were numerous nails inside her body. Sucipto realized what had happened and asked Mbah to send the curse back to Wicak as a form of revenge. As a result, a glass of water in Wicak’s house was poisoned with black magic, and although it was meant to be drunk by the man, his innocent daughter unfortunately drank from it and immediately died.
This drove Wicak to lose his mind and made him become a sworn enemy to Sucipto, following which he consulted an immensely powerful shaman named Mbok, whose dark powers were even more effective than Mbah’s. It was Mbok who summoned a horrific spirit called Suanggi to literally cross the Java Sea and turn Sucipto’s life into a living hell by hurting and killing all his family members. The reason for summoning a spirit from so far away was to ensure that most spirit doctors or shamans in Java would not be able to identify the problem and therefore not be able to cure it. Thus, Wicak keeps observing, with immense pride and happiness, as each of Sucipto’s family members are afflicted by the curse, one after another.
Did Ardi and Syifa manage to save their family?
After learning about the exact nature of the curse and the demonic spirit assigned to kill the family, Rustam discovers that the only way to defeat Suanggi would be to perform a purification ritual called a ruwat. For this, water needs to be collected from all the seven beach points where Wicak and Mbok had performed their black magic, and the siblings sign up for this task. In order to harvest water from these points on the beach, they need to identify the spots first, and for this, both Ardi and Syifa go through a ritual to open their respective third eyes, following which supernatural things can be spotted. Together, the siblings make the difficult journey to the seven shrines and collect water from each of them and are even blessed by the Phantom Queen of Java in the end.
In Curse of the Seven Seas’ ending, Ardi and Syifa reach home to carry out the cleansing ritual, the demonic Suanggi has already emerged in its true form, which does physically resemble Satan, and killed both Rustam and Sardi. But with the help of the holy water and also some really terrible CGI, the siblings are able to defeat Suanggi and make the demon completely disappear. Thus, they are indeed able to save their family, although only their father remains alive by now. In turn, Suanggi is seen emerging inside Mbok’s hut and killing both her and Wicak. While it can be argued that it was technically Sucipto who got too greedy and started messing with dark magic, Curse of the Seven Seas does not want to take that route and instead paints him to be on the good side for some odd reason. It can also be argued that he is saved only because of his pious and obedient son, Ardi, and the deaths of his wife and son were punishment for his actions. Ultimately, he learns his lesson and agrees to get rid of the shrine of dark magic at his shop, and Mbah Di performs a ritual to drive the spirit residing inside it away.
