Easily one of my favorite films from the past year and one of the top Asian horror films of the last decade, Kimo Stamboel's celebrated remake of The Queen of Black Magic was just launched on the US streaming service Shudder on January 28th, 2021. In honor of the film's release, I talk with him about his early memories of the original, the shooting of the film and what he expects from the future.
Me: Hello, and thank you for taking the time to do this! First of all, do you have any special fondness for the original? Is it a special film for you in any way?
Kimo Stamboel: Hello, thank you! Yeah, I mean, when I was little...the film was 1984 I think or '86 but I actually remember watching it around 1989 or so. Somewhere on Indonesian television, one night my parents leave the TV on and I was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time, and I don't know what sort of movie that is but it sort of hit me because of the classics. Back in the days, there were no such channels on our side, there's only like one channel in Indonesia and I wake up hearing someone watching the TV. I think either my father or my mother purposefully left it on but I think it was that movie because it was pretty much traumatizing at 7 years old when you see a head separate and fly across the screen at you! That's pretty traumatic for me because I woke up wanting to go to the bathroom and at that time, it sort of embedded itself in my memory somehow, but I sort of cleared it for several years and I forgot about the movie.
Me: Where did the plan to remake it come from? How did you get involved in the project?
KS: So, jump forward to 2019, the producers called me in and said to me 'You wanna do a remake of an 80s' classic?" At that time, Joko's film Satan's Slaves was a very big hit and I asked 'What is it?" It's a big pressure on me if I don't make it as successful and they gave me the title, The Queen of Black Magic. Then the producers ask me if you've ever watched this film and I think for a second, I've seen several classic Indonesian classic horror films but I haven't grasped the title. Then they showed me the film and when that scene came on, oh my god this is the film I saw as a little boy! This is so weird as the image stayed me and maybe at the time where I fall in love with the genre itself as I really like old classic horror.
At that moment, I thought okay, this is awesome, and it really clicked with me and I was really excited when they told me I was doing this remake because it's sort of different from the other classic horror films because the gory stuff, which I love, excelled at that time. Also, the film itself, a classic, it won a lot of Indonesian festivals and got a lot of talk about it and I was really excited the producers asked me to remake this stuff.
The other thing is, when I asked who's going to write it, they said Joko is going to do it! Oh, okay, that's awesome, me and Joko being friends for a long time have never had a chance to collaborate and this is one of the times that Joko can write it and I can direct it!
Me: How did you settle on the cast involved in the film?
KS: That was also a challenge as the cast I was aiming for, a lot of them couldn't get the time right for our shoot! At the end of the day, I got most of them, a lot of them I wanted to work with again. Also, the cast, when I told them I wanted to do a remake of this classic surprisingly they pretty much didn't know about it. The younger ones, they were like 'What is that?' and we need to show them the classics! They were sort of like, okay, that's pretty scary but are we going to do a story like that? No, the story's going to be written by Joko and I try to convince them it's not going to be like that as the stories of the classics don't connect to the millennials right now in our stage, so I have to pitch it to them. Yeah, at the end of the day, they were excited but they didn't know how my treatment was like after they signed the contract so I told them all it's going to be like a horror stuff like usual! I told them this is my gory treatment of the film and oh okay, really, you want to do that?! And yeah, I think they were challenged by the treatment and also the idea itself, and when they read Joko's story they really related to it as there are some issues that actually going on and they're really excited to be on the project?
Me: What, if any, initial goal did you set out to separate this from the original? What did you want to incorporate from the original while still putting your own original spin on it?
KS: Yeah, uh, I sort of wanted to have that classic fear and try to balance it out maybe make it even gorier in a sense. But to have those, the classics, you know, you cannot play with them, they are already cult by themselves so you cannot top them, but in a sense of treatment, I wanted to have that same effect towards the audience when they watch it. They feel the same way at that moment, you know, the same fear they wanted me to have it because when you watch the classic the format is pretty much different, the feel is pretty much different and right now, the story itself is unrelatable from the first one but the only relateable thing is the revenge.
Also, maybe the specific ones I really wanted to do is sort of the scope of, you know, the headless things that embedded in me because that particular part I wanted to get into that as much as I could. I apply it to my Queen of Black Magic, and also the use of the classic black magic stuff, like the use of animals and such, and also, I wanted to put in the horror and terror that they're gonna give to them.
Also, pretty much the characters, you know, they play a big part. the issue is different, Joko's issue is he got traumatized, a fear of what happened in the past but the character's involvement in that is related to the old one because the old one also has this traumatizing event that caused the revenge itself. That's the sort of stuff I wanted to relate to the new one.
Me: What were the actors' reactions to what was being filmed? What do you do on-set to make the more extreme scenes comfortable for everyone involved?
KS: They reacted surprisingly okay, actually. The issue is pretty heavy, but the fact that the young ones, being pretty much professional about it, when I told them a little historical background on the story itself, not the film but into the backstory in the script, they pretty much related to that. I think the use of the black magic thing, they pretty much knew about that because it's a part of our culture in a way, they sort of grasped it, but the younger ones, the actor who played the character of Haqi, I sort of have to tell him what this black magic thing and the effect they talked about, but I was lucky I had an actor who can understand and be mature about it. that's something I really feel blessed about that sort of actor who wanted to collaborate in this project, so it's not a lot of tough things to do but when we did the part of getting the photographs because there's the scene where Hanif the main character sees the photograph we need to make that photograph. so that becomes a little different because we need to tell this child 'There's this old creepy guy who's doing this thing,' but we shoot it separately because of technology so I think it's safe. it's much more difficult explaining it to the parents, like 'Okay what movie do you want to make?' That's pretty tough, man, we have to explain to the parents, 'Okay this is what we want to do and this is the whole story, it's like this, it's based on a remake and such and such,' so I think they understand.
Me: Lastly, what do you hope or aspire for new audiences now that they can see the film? Thank you again for your time!
KS: I hope they enjoy the terror we are going to bring up on the screen, and to have fun with the film! It's sort of in a way give you thrills and some sort of fear in you that maybe you didn't know you have, hopefully, you guys enjoy it!
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