The Indonesian horror film “Qorin” tells the tale of the principal of an all-girls Islamic school, whose obsession to become the most powerful man and take control of the lives of his students made him cross the line and indulge in all sorts of evil practices. It has been written and directed by Ginanti Rona, with a screenplay by Lele Laila. So, let’s find out what was happening in the school and what kinds of horrors the innocent girls were being subjected to.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Qorin’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
The tone of the film is set immediately when we see a woman running through what looks like a cornfield, and her yelps of pain make it clear that she is being chased by an evil entity. Though we do not catch a proper glimpse of the person chasing her, we realize that there is something very strange about the whole situation, as, for a moment, it feels like she is being chased by her own clone. We are taken inside an Islamic school where the emphasis is on studying the Quran and the sacred law, and the students have to follow a strict code of conduct. We are introduced to a girl named Zahra, who is an overachiever and wants to be the best in her class. She knows the hadiths and the verses from the Quran by heart, and one day, she wanted to become like Ummi Yana, the prefect who looked after the girls. Gendhis and Icha were Zahra’s best friends, and the three girls always hung out together and shared their dormitory. One day, while going back from their class, they met Ummi Hana and her husband, Ustad Jaelani, who were the owners of the school.
Ustad Jaelani also taught the girls a few subjects, and he asked Zahra to meet him later that day in his office. There was something very strange and eerie about Jaelani’s whole demeanor, and it became apparent that he was not the nobleman he was portraying himself to be. When Zahra went to his office, she found out that there was a new girl named Yolanda who had joined the school, and Jaelani wanted Zahra to show her around. Yolanda was nothing like the girls who studied in the Islamic school: she didn’t cover her head with a hijab; she had a mobile phone in her possession, which the other girls were told was not good for their souls; and most of all, she was not scared to question the authority and raise her voice against anything she didn’t feel was right. It was pretty evident from seeing Yolanda that she hadn’t come to the school by her choice and that she hated every moment she spent there. Yolanda was more concerned about how many gates the school had as if she was trying to decipher how she could escape from the school if the need ever arose.
Jaelani was teaching the girls a lot of things that the original founder of the school and father of Ummi Hana, Kiai Mustofa had strictly prohibited. He was teaching girls to summon something known as Qorin Jinn (also referred to as Qareen Jinn), which he said was like an evil companion that urged a human being to take the wrong path. Jaelani said that the Qorin Jinn always accompanied an individual and constantly forced them to do the wrong thing. Jaelani was of the opinion that, though practicing dark arts could be fatal for innocent girls, they needed to learn them as through them, they could shed worldly logic. The girls were scared, and they didn’t know how to tell Jaelani that they didn’t want to be a part of the ritual.
Why Did Jaelani Want To Summon The Jinn?
The girls were asked to make a mini-shroud and collect weird stuff like nail and hair cuttings to call the Qorin Jinn. He forcefully made them take part in the ritual, and the girls were disturbed with what happened after that. They started behaving erratically, as if they were possessed, with this apparition of their own distorted selves following them everywhere. Though Zahra used to get nightmares quite often, and it felt like she was susceptible to such dark magic more than anybody else, she was somehow able to stay sane amidst all the madness that was happening inside the school. Jaelani was a serial abuser, and he had molested almost every girl that was studying at his school. The girls who had been abused were petrified of him, and they had to deal with the trauma of seeing him every day and pretending like he had done nothing wrong.
Jaelani’s wife, Hana, had an idea of what her husband was up to, and she even asked him not to make the girls practice the Jinn arts, but she herself didn’t have a say in any matter. Ummi Yana also tried to stop Jaelani once, but he told her that she didn’t have any right to meddle in his personal business. Jaelani’s main aim in summoning the Qorin was to possess the girls and make them do whatever he wanted with them. He wanted the girls to worship him blindly and not question his authority, even if he abused them. Jaelani knew that there was a probability that the girls might inform the law enforcement authorities of what was happening to them, and that was why he wanted to find a way to make them surrender to his will. In addition to all this, he wanted to feel powerful, as the presence of his father-in-law always made him feel subdued and weak. Zahra saw him using dark magic to possess Icha and then taking advantage of her when she was not in her senses. Zahra knew that she had to do something and try to escape from the premises before things went out of hand.
‘Qorin’ Ending Explained: Did Zahra Free The Girls? Is Jaelani Dead Or Alive?
There was a girl named Sri who was expelled from the school sometime back, but later Zahra realized that it was not her misconduct that was the reason behind it. Sri was kept in captivity by Jaelani, and she was probably the first person whom he tried to abuse by using dark magic. Jaelani had also kept his wife, Ummi Hana, in captivity with Sri because he knew that she would get in his way and not let him accomplish his goal. Jaelani knew that his father-in-law, Kiai Mustofa, would never have let him practice the dark arts if he had been alive and he would have definitely taken strict action if he knew about his depravity.
Yolanda and Zahra found out where Sri and Hana were being kept as captives, and they made their escape from there. The girls were constantly being haunted by their companion Jinns, and they were having a hard time dealing with it. Some, who were strong-willed like Yolanda, were able to survive the trauma, but there were others like Icha, who unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day. Zahra saw her friends dying such a painful death, and something changed inside her. She had endured the torture for a very long time, and she decided that it was about time she faced her fears and defeated them. Yolanda told her that she wouldn’t leave her side no matter what, and her words gave a lot of courage to Zahra. The girls were constantly praying in the mosque, but Jaelani’s spells were way too powerful for them. Ummi Yana was constantly trying to bring the possessed girls back to their normal state by sprinkling holy water on them, but she knew that the evil powers would ultimately bring them all into Jaelani’s control. Zahra, Yolanda, Sri, and Ummi Hana were escaping when they encountered Mr. Malik, the school’s caretaker, standing in front of them. He had worked for Jaelani up until then, but the girls urged him to empathize with their plight and take a stand for them. Malik tried to stop Jaelani, but he was no match for the evil powers that Jaelani now had at his disposal.
At the end of “Qorin,” the girls come face-to-face with Jaelani, and they know that only a miracle could save their lives. Ummi Yana prayed profusely, and through her chants, she was able to summon the spirit of their beloved Kiai Mustofa. The purity of Mustofa’s spirit overpowered the evil that resided inside Jaelani, and the girls were able to buy some time and make a head start. But Jaelani had become very strong, and as soon as he got the better of Mustofa’s spirit, he stabbed Ummi Yana and killed her.
Jaelai came for the girls once again, but Hana stopped him and entered into a fierce combat with him. Jaelnai would have definitely killed her, but Yolanda came running and pushed him aside. Yolanda pounced on him, but Jaelani was able to stab her. Zahra also got rid of her Qorin jinn by chanting verses from the Holy Book and came to the rescue of her friend. Zahra slit Jaelani’s neck and threw him off the bridge, but still, she was unable to save her friend. Yolanda sacrificed her life and stood by Zahra until her last breath, as she had promised. Though Jaelani met his doom, he had given the girls a lifetime of traumatic memories, and Zahra and the other girls knew that it would be a herculean task to get back to their normal lives.
‘Qorin’ Mid-Credit Scene Explained: What Does it Suggest?
In the mid-credit scene of “Qorin,” we saw that the shrouds that the girls had prepared were being burned so that the Jinns could go back to their own realm. Every girl had a companion, an evil jinn who stood near the fire with eyes like a bottomless abyss and stared into the void. We don’t know whether the burning of the shrouds sent them back to their supernatural realm or if it would prove ineffective against the powerful evil spirits. It is possible that Jaelani’s spirit finds a way to return to the mortal realm and try to take revenge for his death and wreak havoc on the lives of the girls. Maybe in the future, the evil jinn would once again pose a threat to the girls, but for now, it seemed like they had evaded the danger.
