The film is set in year 1981; one of our main characters, Rini, is trying to scrounge
up some royalty money out of her mother’s old vinyl records, but to no avail.
Her mother was a well-known singer in the country for a time, until one day she fell
ill, and in turn, Rini, along with the rest of her family fell into poverty.
She returns home with disappointment, but puts up a calm facade for her grandma and
her little brothers: Bondi, and the youngest one, Ian, who is mute and hence communicates
with sign language.
Right after, she goes to see her jobless father, and informs him of her failure to obtain any
royalty money.
Since the family is running out of means to support themselves, Rini suggests that they
should sell the house, but the father reminds her that they won’t be able to find a buyer
fast enough, so they should look for other solutions.
The two are then interrupted by a sound of a bell ring, which is rung by the sick mother whenever
she requires someone to tend to her needs.
Rini makes her way upstairs and checks on her unresponsive mother, but suddenly, the mother
starts screaming while frantically ringing the bell, as if something is scaring her.
Rini remains unfazed and simply takes the bell off her hand until she calms
down.
At nighttime, the father plays one of his wife’s records and waits for his other son,
Tony, to come home, and when he does,
The sweet boy tells him that he's
selling his motorbike to a neighbor to make some money for the family.
The father then sells the motorcycle to their neighbor, who is waiting at their house.
Afterwards, Tony greets his siblings in the kitchen, and we learn that he’s been
selling all of his belongings to help the family, and Rini starts scolding him for it
until they get interrupted by yet another bell ring.
This time, it is Tony who goes upstairs to check on the mother.
He tenderly starts brushing her hair, until he discovers that her hair is falling out.
And then...
Tony moves to close it to keep the wind from blowing inside, but when he turns around,
the mother is creepily staring at him, which prompts him to excuse himself.
Later that night when everyone’s asleep, Rini is woken up by a bell ring.
She goes to check on the sick mother, but oddly enough finds her standing upright, so
she walks up to her,
It turns out that it is not her real mother that she touched.
Thankful that it’s just a nightmare.
However, Rini hears the bell ring once more, exactly like how it was in her dream.
Just like before, she goes to check on the mother, and discovers her standing upright
just like in her dream.
She slowly approaches the figure, while making sure that her real mother isn’t lying on
the bed.
But then...
She starts freaking out and calls for her father, who rushes to check for a pulse but
doesn’t find any.
The rest of the children storm in after and cry in agony when they realize that their
mother has passed.
They hold a funeral, and lay her to rest at a cemetery right across the house.
Right after the funeral, we get introduced to Hendra, the son of a local Imam who’s
trying to shoot his shot during what’s probably the worst possible time for Rini.
His advances go ignored, so he proceeds to join the rest of the neighborhood men chanting
prayers to honor the dearly departed at the family house.
Here we can see that the father and Tony aren’t joining the rest of the men in chanting prayers,
being the atheists that they are.
After the neighborhood men leave, the father announces that since he no longer has to tend
to his sick wife anymore, he’s going to go to the city to look for work.
Despite their initial objections, they give him their blessings after the father says
they'll be homeless otherwise.
Later that night, Tony is in his room alone, listening to the radio right when he suddenly
begins to hear a bell ring.
Driven by sheer curiosity, he decides to follow the sound, which leads him right to his parents
bedroom.
Tony scrambles away in fear upon seeing the floating bell, but doesn’t tell his family
about it in the morning.
The father has already left for town, while Tony still tries to play it cool, and presents
Bondi with a Picture Viewer toy to cheer him up before heading to school.
Having quit college for a while because her family couldn’t afford her tuition, Rini
spends her day doing chores around the house.
Since the plumbing is suddenly not working, she goes to fetch water from the well and
washing dishes.
When she’s about to leave the room, she notices a figure briefly appears in the mirror,
but brushes it aside for now.
Meanwhile, Bondi is busy having fun with his new toy.
He keeps switching from picture to picture, until…
He sees a scary version of his mother in the toy and drops it.
Bondi tries browsing again; but this time, the camera goes back to normal.
Back to the story, later that night Tony stays awake again to listen to his favorite radio
show, but the channel suddenly switches, and begins playing one of his mother’s songs.
He ignores it and switches it back, but instead begins hearing the bell ring for a moment,
followed by his mother’s voice calling for him in the radio.
Creeped out, he switches the radio off, only to find his mother standing next to his bed,
but disappears when he turns the lights on.
That same night, little Bondi and Ian go to the bathroom together, but when they’re
about to return to their room, the picture of their mother on the wall seems to scare
Ian.
His older brother picks up a white cloth to cover it up.
Just then, the blanket lands on an invisible person.
The two boys scream as the figure starts chasing them, and tell Rini that they saw a ghost,
but Rini dismisses it, telling them that it's only their nightmare.
Meanwhile, grandma sits and writes a letter in her room, unbothered by all the commotion
downstairs.
That next morning, Tony who is now traumatized by the bell ring decides to bury the mother’s
bell in her grave, while not far from the house, Rini takes a stroll with Hendra, the
Imam’s son.
Here he reveals that he has a sixth sense, and during the mother’s funeral, he saw
a strange figure who might be a ghost.
He also saw the ghost again recently when he passed by their house, and convinced that
the ghost is an evil spirit that is taking the shape of their late mother.
therefore he offers the family to take refuge at his house, but Rini remains skeptical and
politely refuses.
Meanwhile, the grandmother is seen running away from something.
The grandmother then stops and stands up, as if something has caught her.
Shortly after, Rini gets home, followed by Bondi who just came home from school.
But when Bondi heads for the bathroom, he suddenly screams in fear, prompting Rini to
rush to his aid, and discover in horror that their grandmother has fallen into the well
and drowned to death.
They hold a proper funeral for her, but Bondi who is probably scarred for life has seemingly
fallen ill.
After making sure her sick brother is taken care of, Rini visits the grandmother’s room
to sort out her belongings.
She instead finds an unsent letter addressed to a man called Budiman.
Curious, she goes to Hendra and asks him to take her to the city and meet the man.
They head to the address written on the letter, and asks Budiman to reveal what he knows because
in the letter, the grandma apparently asked for Budiman to help the family, though she
never specified with what.
Here Budiman explains how he’s an old friend of the grandmother, and begins telling Rini
quite a bit of her family history, particularly about the fact that the grandma and the mother
had a rocky relationship for quite a while, because the mother couldn’t bear a child
for years.
One day, the mother was suddenly able to conceive children just fine, and thus, Rini and her
siblings came into the world.
The grandma and the mother made up ever since, but for the past two years, after seeing the
mother fall into some mysterious illness, the grandma had become suspicious that the
mother probably made a deal with the devil to enable her to have children.
Ever the skeptical, Rini finds this hard to believe, but Budiman asks her to keep an open
mind and hands her a magazine article that he wrote.
He ominously tells Rini that nobody in the family can be taken away, as long as they
love each other.
When Rini returns home, we can clearly see that something is not right with Bondi, as
he keeps giving Ian a death glare,.
That night after the two boys get tucked in, in his sleep Bondi uses sign language to
tell Ian that he wants Ian to die.
This of course scares the little Ian, and he tries to sleep it off.
But then…
Bondi sleepwalks over to Ian before walking back to his own bed.
Not long after, Ian feels the urge to pee, so he heads to the bathroom, but changes his
mind when he sees the grandma’s ghost inside.
He then tries to make a run for it, but gets caught on something.
The fact that he can't scream because he is mute makes it even worse.
When Rini wakes up in the morning, she finds something odd about her mother’s record,
so she tries to play it backwards, and eerily discovers that it is a recording of a cult
praying to the Devil.
She gets even more scared when she learns that little Ian isn’t on his bed, so she
scours for him, only to find him hiding inside a chest outside the house.
Tony then comes up to Rini with the magazine article that Budiman gave her, and Rini tells
him that she hasn’t read it yet.
So he begins telling her that the article is about a woman who longed to have a child
for 10 years, and was finally able to conceive after she joined a certain cult.
But the catch is, when the youngest child turns seven, she must hand over the child
to the cult.
Tony then points out that every single one of the children in this family has a 6-year
age gap with the other, and theorizes that perhaps their mother made a pact with the
cult, but didn’t have the heart to sacrifice any of them, so she decided to keep having
children, until the cult probably grew impatient and made her fall ill.
Based on this article, their woman wasn't pregnant from their father; but instead she
was impregnated by different members of a satanic cult.
Tony says that this might be related to them, since all of their siblings look distinctly
different.
To add, he recalls how when their mother was still a famous singer, she would throw events
and a group of weird people would always show up.
If what the article says is true, then it means Ian is in danger because he turns 7
in a few days.
Tony ends his exposition by saying that the child will get picked up by ‘the walking
dead,’ a part which makes Rini scoff because of how ridiculous it sounds.
But for all of her skepticism, when Rini is preparing lunch for Ian not long after, she
briefly sees what looks like a ghost of her late grandmother.
She decides to summon the neighborhood Imam to bless the place with prayers.
At the end of his visit, he suggests that they should start praying to keep evil spirits
away.
On that very night, Rini listens and prays as the imam advises, but all of the sudden,
If you thought that was gonna be it, well,
it’s not:
the mother suddenly appears in front of her, making her
scream and try to take off her prayer garments, but it won’t come off, and instead, the
evil entity starts crawling inside.
Meanwhile at the same time, Ian who is trying to sleep finds grandma standing over the sleeping
Bondi.
Now spooked to death, the siblings rush to the imam’s house to take refuge.
The following morning, the two eldest siblings discuss about what they should do.
They get interrupted by a phone call from Budiman the grandma’s friend, who requests
for Hendra to drive over to his place now because there’s something important he needs
to show them.
When Hendra arrives to Budiman’s, the old man sends him off with a letter for Rini and
the family.
At the same time, back at the Imam’s house we see Bondi looking possessed and reaching
for a knife to kill Ian, but he gets stopped by an oblivious Rini who takes the knife away
from him.
Back to Hendra, he leaves Budiman’s residence, and right after, a stranger knocks on Budiman’s
door and we see him brace himself, meanwhile Hendra gets into a gruesome accident that
kills him instantly.
They carry his body back to his house, and conveniently, the letter falls out of his
pocket, conveniently drawing Rini’s attention.
They hold a funeral for him that afternoon, and spend the rest of the night grieving,
until Rini sees a figure resembling the imam's son standing out in the woods, but then…
An unseen force begins pulling her, until her brother rushes to her aid.
The Imam witnesses this happen but doesn’t do a thing.
After Rini manages to get off the figure’s grip, she and Tony take their brothers and
head for the door, right when the father arrives and embraces them in his arms, saying that
he heard they’ve been staying there from the neighbors.
They head back home, and the father announces that they only have to stay here one more
night, because he’s found them another place to live.
The father isn’t off the hook that easily after everything that’s happened; Rini gets
him alone and confronts him about the fact that she saw him say something to mother the
night she died, but instead of answering, the father shadily tells her that all that
matters to him is his love for his children.
Meanwhile, Ian asks Tony to accompany him to the bathroom.
But Ian suddenly gets locked inside the room, and Tony yelling for help from downstairs.
His father tries to save him, as Ian gets dragged into the well.
Without further ado, the father plunges himself into the water and fetches the little boy,
while the two siblings help him get back up.
Unbeknownst to them, a scary figure rises from the bottom of the well.
And then, right when they exit the bathroom, they notice a group of creepy-looking individuals
approach the house, prompting them to lock all entrances.
Of course, these people are none other than the cult members.
To make matters worse, grandma’s old wheelchair is suddenly flung at the three, followed by
the dining chair, which forces them to go hide in another room…
Unfortunately the door shuts, parting them from Bondi and Ian.
Bondi hides behind a pillar, meanwhile Ian clings onto the doorframe and for some reason,
grandma’s ghost seems to want to pull him back into the well.
And then surprisingly, Ian starts screaming Bondi’s name.
Bondi who's been trying to kill Ian a few times before, eventually decides to save his
little brother.
This is when all the fiasco suddenly stops, and the family embrace each other in relief.
After making sure his children are okay, the father steps out under the rain and shouts
at the cult members, taunting them and insisting that he would never let them take his children,
and Tony pulls him back in.
For some reason, the cult members do as he says; they leave, but not before scattering
what looks like seeds in perfect synchrony.
That next morning, it looks like all is finally well with the family: they pack up their things
and wait for the movers to pick them up.
The neighborhood Imam even stops by to bid them goodbye, and apologizes for not helping
Rini earlier because he is still in mourning for his dead son.
While the father chats with the imam, Rini steps outside to get some air, and stumbles
upon a series of red seeds spread all over the ground.
Fascinated, she decides to keep some.
Nighttime arrives, but the movers are still a no-show, to everyone’s confusion.
And then, a blackout happens, and since it’s a general blackout, the imam stays the night
with the family to protect them.
Tired of waiting, the siblings get ready for bed, but Rini can’t seem to fall asleep,
so she decides to read the most recent note that Budiman sent.
After reading it, she wakes Tony to present her findings.
Budiman recently discovered that he made a mistake in his previous writing, which is
that the last child of the family isn’t going to be taken by the cult.
Instead, the child is a Devil incarnate himself who will realize his full power during the
night of his 7th birthday.
This explains why the grandma’s ghost only messed and tried to kill Ian but not the rest
of the family; grandma’s ghost only wanted to protect them from Ian.
Just as Rini said all this, they begin to hear a bell ring, and find their dead mother
making her way upstairs, headed straight for her bedroom.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the house Bondi wakes up to find Ian seemingly talking
to himself, and eloquently says that his friends are outside, before laughing maniacally as
he struts out of the room.
As Bondi confusedly looks to the window, he finds two dead bodies in shrouds standing
upright, which scares him and gets him to hide under the bed as the dead bodies climb
inside.
Meanwhile back in the living room, the Imam wakes to find his dead son walking, along
with other dead people who have just risen from their graves.
The father is the next person to realize what’s going on, as he wakes to find his dead wife
lying next to him.
He slips his way out of the room and quickly fetches his two eldest children, but when
they arrive downstairs, they stumble upon the Imam dying with his throat slit.
Despite Rini’s warnings, the father is still in disbelief that his youngest son could possibly
a Devil incarnate, so he goes outside to retrieve Ian but sees the little boy looking creepily
chipper with his army of dead people.
They quickly return inside, as the dead army try to get back inside the house to possibly
end their lives.
They lock the side door but the dead army breaks their way in, so the family dashes
and locks another door.
This time though, the grandma’s ghost seems to be helping with all her might to hold the
door.
And then just in time, Budiman comes to the rescue, and they quickly pile into a car before
driving away in relief, leaving Ian behind.
The last scene is a time jump to one year later; it shows the family living in a small
apartment, where their next-door neighbor just kindly gave away some home-cooked dish.
But unexpectedly, when the neighbor retreats inside her own apartment, we learn that she
may be a part of the cult, as her apartment is filled with a supply of red seeds we saw
in the previous scene.
The neighbor's lover urges to keep the family doesn't move out,
foreshadowing the grim events Rini's family will encounter.
The film ends with the cult lady eerily dancing with her man, and the family’s story continues
in the sequel, Satan Slaves 2 that just came out this year.