Guna Guna Istri Muda is an Indonesian supernatural horror film recently released on Netflix for global audiences, although it’s a bit confusing to me why it was ever made. While most Indonesian horror films are not up to the par by global or Asian standards, many of the films actually give us a brief look into the life and culture in the island country, no matter how flawed or backdated that look might be. Guna Guna Istri Muda unfortunately does not even manage to do this, as it tells the uninteresting story of a young wife cursing her new husband out of greed for his wealth, and it is a film that should truly be avoided by everyone.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
Guna Guna Istri Muda begins at a fitness studio, where a group of women are seen dancing as part of their workout routine. Among them are two best friends, Angel and Mayang, who are extremely close to each other, sharing everything about their lives with one another. Following their workout, Angel enthusiastically meets her new boyfriend, Leo, and although Mayang is happy for her friend, a third woman in their group, who is also close to them, is a bit surprised. The friend informs Mayang that she dated Leo in the past and that it was a horrible experience, as the man had been with her only for her money. She asks Mayang to warn Angel about Leo’s strange habits, and particularly his belief in black magic, and then heads into the washroom by herself. Inside the washroom, the woman first starts experiencing an insatiable itch all over her body, because of which she violently scratches off the skin on her neck before throwing up maggots and blood. As she falls to the floor and is haunted by this supernatural itch, she drowns in a pool of gunky liquid and seemingly dies.
In a different part of the city, a woman named Vivian Sasmita inaugurates a new school, to which she and her husband have donated a significant amount of money. Vivian’s husband, Burhan, is the owner of a profitable family business, and she, too, is equally involved in running it, mostly seeing to the philanthropic activities. In fact, Vivian has been donating to various educational institutions, like schools and training centers, to help the citizens of her country prosper. But there has been a specific crisis in her personal life in the recent past, for Vivian has figured out that Burhan has been having extramarital affairs. Since Burhan also knows that his wife has pretty much figured out his actions, he comes up with a brilliantly convenient plan—to end all secrecy and officially marry his girlfriend to make her his second wife. Burhan’s logic behind this decision is that he and his girlfriend (and perhaps even Vivian; I am not sure how this religious morality work) have been sinning by being involved in an extramarital affair (or supporting it, in Vivian’s case), all of which will be absolved if they officially marry.
Thus, Burhan excitedly calls up his much younger girlfriend to inform her that Vivian has given him the permission to marry her. The girlfriend happens to be Angel, the same young woman seen embracing Leo earlier, and she is currently seen to have just spent some intimate time with him. Although Angel is currently dating Leo, she has been seeing other men as well, Burhan being one of them. As Burhan comes with a lot of money and influence, Angel readily agrees to the marriage proposal and soon dumps Leo to go through the official process of the marriage ceremony, still unaware that Leo has easy access to dangerous black magic.
How does Leo plan to exact his revenge?
When Leo is dumped by Angel, he is still in love with the young woman, and therefore, does not want to leave her. Upon the advice of Mayang, Angel also goes through Leo’s stuff at their hotel room, only to find some objects used in black magic, which confirms that Mayang and her friend had been right in suspecting him. Particularly, a photograph of Angel was carefully kept inside a wrapped banana leaf, along with a few strands of her hair and a bottle of liquid, which made it clear that Leo had actually used black magic to make her fall in love with him. Unfortunately for her, Leo walks into the room right as she is making these discoveries, and he immediately tries to get hold of the totem to stop Angel from leaving him. Therefore, she has to break the bottle of liquid and then push Leo away, which results in him falling on the glass shards and seriously injuring an eye.
Along with being physically and emotionally hurt, Leo’s ego is also deeply offended, because of which he decides to do just about anything to ensure that Angel is punished for leaving him. He returns home to his mother, Sumi, who happens to be a shaman with great expertise in black magic, and so it was she who had helped Leo make Angel fall in love with him in the first place. In fact, when the young woman is seen dying mysteriously at the beginning of the film, it is clearly the work of Sumi as well. It was mentioned that the woman had also dumped Leo because of his dislikable character, following which he must have decided to seek revenge against her. He must have gone to his mother, just like at present, and Sumi must have unleashed the full force of her dark powers against her to terrorize and kill her.
Although Sumi is a terrible mother for teaching her son to use black magic on women instead of teaching him the social skills to be a likeable person, she is very protective of Leo. Therefore, she is angered to see her son injured so horribly and asks him who was responsible for his state. When Leo tells his mother what had happened, and says he wants to ensure that Angel and her new husband, Burhan, never be able to be happy in their lives, Sumi does not hesitate to help him out. She orders him to get hold of some spit from both the individuals they are trying to harm so that voodoo dolls of them can be made and used to torture them.
Leo has no difficulty in getting hold of the spit samples, first targeting Angel and intentionally irking her so that she spits on his face out of disgust. Next, he heads over to the construction site where Burhan has been overseeing the work, which also happens to have a graveyard in one corner, which needs to be spiritually cleansed before any new project can be started. Leo pretends to be a shaman and asks Burhan to spit in a vessel, which would apparently cleanse the graveyard very effectively. Thus, he gets hold of the required materials, the rest of which his mother already has at her disposal, and so Sumi prepares the two voodoo dolls meant to represent Angel and Burhan.
How does Angel turn the situation around in her favor?
When Leo is told to bury the voodoo dolls at the respective houses of the two individuals he wants to harm, the young man succeeds in completing only half the task. Burhan’s mansion is immense and also relatively unguarded, because of which Leo is able to easily dig up a hole and bury the doll in it. Heading over to Angel’s house, or rather, the house that Burhan had gifted to her after their marriage, he tries burying the doll but gets caught by two of her friends, who happened to come to the place at that very time. As a result, Angel finds out about the plot that is in the works against her, and she immediately takes Leo captive with the help of her friends.
This is how Angel very quickly turns the entire situation in her favor, as she first tortures Leo to find out about the shaman he had been using, his mother, and then goes over to her address. Angel knows that although Burhan’s first wife, Vivian, has allowed him to marry her, she and their children will still get a significant portion of the man’s money. Besides, Angel also fears that Vivian will not let Burhan visit her often, and so she knows that she will have to resort to black magic. However, she has an even more important mission at hand, which is to seduce Burhan’s nephew, Roy, a young man she feels attracted to. As Roy has been ordered by his uncle to stay with Angel and tend to her needs at the house, she tries to seduce him at first, only for Roy to completely turn down her advances.
Therefore, Angel now needs the help of black magic in order to get the man she wants and also to show off her skill at attracting men towards her to Mayang. Angel has been portrayed as an evil and depraved woman, both by moralistic and religious standards, who would do just about anything for money and status. It is not unexpected that she goes to Sumi and orders her to prepare a potion for her with the help of black magic that would make Roy fall in love with her. Although Sumi has her boundaries when it comes to taking clients, and she does not want to serve the same woman who had shattered her son’s heart (and his right eye), she does not have any choice by the end. Angel has been holding Leo captive still, and her two friends beat up the man while all of it is shown to Sumi via a video call. Thus, the shaman does not have any option but to work for Angel, just to ensure the safety of her son.
Is Vivian safe from the curses?
While Angel is able to make Roy her lover, Mayang eventually turns against her, for she wanted to be with the young man herself, and so she sends a photo of Angel and Roy in bed to Burhan. Since Burhan is very sick by now due to the horrific effects of the voodoo curse, it is Vivian who sees the photo on his phone and reacts to it by catching the extramarital lovers red-handed. Roy is obviously in a daze and has no clue about what he is doing, because when have men ever been held responsible after being caught having affairs? Vivian threatens Angel that she will ensure the young woman is no longer a part of the family because she has dared to make her beloved nephew impure through her shameless acts. This finally sets Angel directly against Vivian, and she goes to Sumi to ensure that Vivian is cursed and killed next.
But the usual curses, or forms of black magic, are not effective against Vivian, because there is a supernatural aura around her that constantly protects her from dark and evil powers. This aura is actually the blessing of God himself, and that of Brother Kholil, the spiritual guide whom she has helped in many ways through the family charity program. Besides, Vivian is also someone who regularly donates and shares her wealth with the needy, because of which she has all their blessings and the good karma from these acts, which is why she cannot be harmed so easily. However, there are always ways to bypass protective measures for expert shamans like Sumi, and so she finally manages to curse Vivian after baking a cake with a rotten egg with evil powers and sending it to her house. Vivian and Roy start eating the cake without any worries, despite their family being targeted by a dangerous curse, and this ultimately gets Vivian in grave danger.
Can Burhan and his family be saved?
Once Vivian has been affected by the curse, and tries to kill her own son as an effect of it, the entire family is in terrible danger, and even Brother Kholil is unable to help with her condition beyond a point. He realizes the kind of curse that has been put on the woman and explains that the only way to save her would be to stop the person performing the black magic rituals. By now, Burhan had realized that his new wife was pure evil and had married him only for his money, and so he had decided to divorce Angel. But it had been clear to everyone that Angel would not let go of him so easily, and so it does not take much effort for Kholil and Roy to understand that the woman must be the one behind this entire fiasco. Therefore, Kholil and Roy rush to Sumi’s home in order to stop her, and they obviously find Angel there as well. Much like the good spiritual leader, Sumi had also figured out that a positive force was fighting against her curse, and so she was already prepared for this kind of intrusion. With the help of her brilliant skills, Sumi is able to teleport herself and the other characters to the street outside, after dark, where it is easier for the film to show off the really bad visual effects.
During Guna Guna Istri Muda’s ending, Sumi is about to kill Kholil and Vivian when Roy enters the scene with her son, Leo. Roy had earlier managed to rescue Leo from Angel’s goons, and now that she no longer has to protect her son, Sumi immediately stops her ritual, meaning that Vivian and Burhan are now completely clear of any trouble, and they have a happy family reunion with their young son. Before anything can be done against them, Sumi teleports herself and Leo away from the place, ensuring that they are safe as well.
What happens to Angel?
Angel is considered the main antagonist throughout the film, and therefore, in the end, she gets the punishment she deserves. Although Angel manages to flee the scene in her car, Sumi had already sneakily collected some strands of hair from her head earlier. Now that Sumi and Leo are safe, she uses Angel’s hair to perform a black magic ritual against her, which brings numerous snakes into her car. She has to run out of the vehicle and find some shelter, but before she can help herself, Angel is seemingly killed and devoured by the snakes.
