The Story of Southern Islet (2020) Hey, what's up guys.
Today I'll show you a mystery horror film: "The Story of Southern Islet"!
Spoilers ahead, watch out, and take care! The story begins with Chong and Yan,
a married couple. They are standing in front of an altar to Datuk Gong, their local deity.
Near the altar is a snake, which Chong chases away to his neighbor Nam's doorstep.
He ends up accidentally breaking Nam's fence. That night, over dinner, Yan tells Chong that
they should move the altar to their local god elsewhere.
She tells him that the altar makes it hard for them to hang their laundry. Chong gets upset,
and tells Yan that it's disrespectful to hand their underwear in front of the deity.
The couple argue until Nam comes to Chong's house, and violently bangs on the door.
He punches a hole through Chong's front door. He slips 20 dollars through the hole in the door,
as compensation for the broken fence. Nam complains that this amount is insufficient; but
their neighbor convinces him to take it. Nam warns Chong that he will be back, if the 20 dollars
isn't enough to buy supplies for repair. Nam gets on his motor, and leaves to buy the
supplies. While Yan tries to cover up the hole in their door with newspapers, she overhears a
voice by Nam's house. While eavesdropping, Yan learns that Nam has been in an accident. He has
just gotten run over by a truck on his way to the hardware store. Yan sits in the dining room,
to contemplate what has just happened. The next morning, Chong sells his wares
at the market. They chat for a while about their children. Their conversation is halted, when they
overhear a man loudly quarreling with a merchant inside the market, "about" broken eggs.
Meanwhile, Yan grounds up chilies for dinner. She exits the house to get more chilies,
and retrieve the hanging laundry. At the same time, her children watch a racy soap opera on tv.
She returns inside, and catches them watching. She sends them away, and changes the channel
to the news, where she learns about the new education policy in the country.
A little while later, Chong arrives home from the market. He looks for his missing fishing shirt;
but Yan tells him to use a different one. Chong is about to catch fish from Nam's field. Yan
tries to stop him; but Chong continues anyway. He leaves and brings his two boys with him.
They arrive at the field. While Chong sets up traps and gets ready to catch fish, he hears
the children playing inside the small shack near the paddy, where offerings are made to the gods.
He sends them to play elsewhere, citing that playing inside will make the gods angry.
Chong returns to fishing. After an hour of laborious fishing, Chong manages to
fill up half of his bucket. Suddenly, he collapses on the banks and passes out.
The children stop playing, after they notice Chong passed out. They rush over to him,
and try to wake him up, but to no avail. They panic, and run out of the fields to call the
neighbors for help. The neighbors arrive, and bring Chong's unconscious body home.
Yan, who is preoccupied watching tv with her neighbor, hears the children outside calling
for her. They tell her that her husband is sick. The neighbors set Chong down on a
chair inside the house. Yan asks them what happened; but nobody can answer her, as they
too are unsure of what happened. She starts looking for snake bites, but finds none.
She tells her sons to get the medicated oil from the altar table. She frantically tries
to wake Chong up; but he continues to remain unresponsive. The kids give Yan the medicated oil;
and she rubs it on her husband's temple and behind his ears. The neighbors tell
Yan that Chong must have offended the gods; but Yan dismisses them, and replies that Chong
has been feeling unwell since the morning. After a few minutes, the oil fortunately takes
effect. Chong wakes up, and tells everyone that he is feeling better. They leave to let Chong get
some proper rest. Later that night, Chong gets settled into bed. He vomits into a chamber pan.
While cleaning up, Yan peeks into the chamber pan. She notices that his vomit is filled with blood.
She's horrified to find a couple of rusty nails in the vomit.
The next day, Yan and her neighbor take Chong to the hospital. Yan is understandably worried,
as no ordinary human would have vomited nails, and survived. The neighbor takes her leave;
and Yan is left to wait for her husband, who soon returns from his consultation. He tells
her that the doctor suspects food poisoning, and a general lack of sleep. He adds that the doctor
has prescribed him some medicine and rest. A nurse shows up, and reminds Yan to pick up
Chong's medicine at the pharmacy, before they leave. Yan gets upset, stating that the doctor
doesn't appear to be taking her husband's case seriously. She shows Chong's vomit to the nurse;
and the nurse gets angry. She tells Yan that the hospital isn't a temple, and that the doctor
isn't a shaman. She states that they don't admit patients for simply vomiting up blood.
Offended at Yan's words, the nurse storms away. They leave the hospital, and wait for a
taxi outside. They are finally able to hail a taxi and get home. On the road,
the driver pulls over to inspect his car. He finds nothing, and drives the couple home.
The following morning, Yan goes out to investigate. She heads to a hardware store,
and looks for the manager. She asks him if they sell nails like the one she found in Chong's
vomit. The manager gets offended. He angrily says that they don't sell rusty nails in his store.
He orders his assistant to give Yan an entire bucket, full of old rusty nails.
Yan asks if any customers have specifically looked for nails like this, but gets no answer.
That night, a spirit in human form appears at the offering shack by the paddy.
It climbs out of the shack on all fours, eats the crops, and lies down on the water.
A month later, Chong remains sick. Yan is forced to take over their stall in the market.
The next day, Yan attends to the housework, while Chong stays sick on the bed.
Yan tells her children that there will be a worship ceremony for the gods that night.
She orders them to stay inside the house. Night falls; and the ceremony begins. Ritual music is
played; and the compound's residents all join in the procession, through the rice paddies.
Outside the offering shack, they pray to the gods; and Nam's wife says a prayer for Nam.
After the procession, Yan goes home to feed her husband. Chong lies on the bed,
now sicker and thinner than ever. Yan feeds him; but Chong quickly declines the food after a couple
of spoonfuls. Yan tells him that he has to eat for the medicine to work effectively. Still, Chong
refuses to eat. Chong finally speaks. He tells Yan that he thinks he has been cursed with black
magic. He expresses his guilt over Nam's death; but Yan reassures him that it wasn't his fault.
Nevertheless, Chong cannot shake off his remorse. He tells Yan to ask The neighbor for help,
since The neighbor has more experience dealing with shamans and witch doctors.
At the same time, Nam's wife hears something outside her house. She goes out to investigate.
She walks back to the rice paddies, and ends up at the offering shack. There, she sees Nam's spirit,
bloody and broken. She breaks down and cries. She hugs what little is left of her husband.
Fast forward to a month later, modern medicine and remedies have failed to heal Chong's ailing
condition. Out of options and running out of time, Yan gives in, and decides to go to
a shaman with The neighbor. They meet with the shaman. He gets angry, offended that Yan took so
long to come to him. He thinks that she doesn't trust him. The neighbor calms the shaman down,
and reassures him that this's only because Yan cannot speak Malay, and therefore,
cannot go by herself to visit him. The shaman relaxes, and lets Yan off the hook.
He tells Yan that Chong is cursed by Nenek Keriang, the spirit of Mount Keriang,
the mountain beside Chong and Yan's house. He adds that Chong had offended the spirit,
by disrespectfully urinating on the mountain. When Yan asks the shaman what she can do to fix this,
the shaman tells her to bring a sarong, fragrance powder, and some betel nuts to the mountain,
as an appeasement offering. The shaman also tells Yan to give
Chong some blessed water to drink. He takes a mouthful of red-colored water from his cup,
gargles it, and spits it back into the cup. He dips a blessed charm into the water. He gives
Yan the water, and sends her on her way. Yan arrives home. While preparing a cup of
blessed water for Chong to drink, Yan accidentally spills the mixture down the drain. Fortunately,
she manages to stop all of it from spilling. She pours what little is left into a cup.
Still skeptical about the power of shamans and their methods, Yan decides to run the mixture
through a strainer, not once but four times. Even after the straining, the mixture remains
cloudy and red. Yan pours the mixture into a pot to boil it, and kill away any bacteria.
At the same time, her children arrive home. They give her a form from school that she has to sign.
Preoccupied with the forms, Yan forgets about the blessed water on the stove.
When she returns to check on it, she finds that it has almost all boiled away.
Later that day, she goes to Mount Keriang to pray, and offer goods to Nenek Keriang.
She hikes up the mountain, and finds an altar to Nenek Keriang, carved into the walls of the
mountain. She offers a candle and continues hiking. She eventually reaches a dark cave,
where Nenek Keriang is reported to dwell. Yan enters and moves deeper into the caves.
She finds the altar, and sets down her offerings. She is praying when she suddenly hears a voice.
She tries to look for the voice, but cannot find the person. She locates the voice coming
from below the cliff inside the cave. Hidden from Yan's knowledge is the fact that the mysterious
woman sitting at the bottom of the cliff, is Nenek Keriang herself in human form.
The two women talk. Nenek Keriang asks Yan what she has come to pray for. Yan tells her that she
is praying for her husband's recovery. She details that Chong has been cursed by Nenek Keriang,
for urinating on her mountain. However, Nenek Keriang reassures Yan that it's not Nenek Keriang,
that is behind Chong's sickness. She tells Yan that Nenek Keriang is not so short-tempered,
as to destroy a man's life for simply urinating on the mountain. She adds that Nenek Keriang
doesn't even like betel nuts and sarongs. After a short silence, Nenek Keriang tells Yan
the story of her life in third person. Apparently, Nenek Keriang was not Malay, but Chinese.
She was even a princess there. One day, she went to Malaysia with the country's prime minister.
While journeying, she met a shaman, who quickly fell in love with her beauty and hormones. The
shaman asked for her hand in marriage; but Nenek Keriang was afraid of him, and sent him away.
This angered the shaman greatly. He cursed her, and turned her and her ship into a mountain.
The people on the ship all died; while the rice on the ship was blown away in the wind,
forming rice paddies all around the mountain. The story ends; and Yan turns to leave. She
takes one last look around and goes home. Yan arrives home, and finds her children
outside the house. They rush to her, and tell her that Chong has gone crazy, and is breaking
the windows in his room. Yan runs over to Chong's room, and finds him staring out the
broken window. He tells her that the windows should be open, so that the one looking for him
can easily find him. Confused and even more worried, Yan cries on Chong's shoulder.
The following day, the kids arrive home from school with Yan. Yan finally removes the laundry
in front of Datuk Gong's altar. She's starting to lose her skepticism, and believe in all the talk
of local gods and mystics. She also notices that Chong's pet bird has died in its cage.
Together with her children, she buries the bird at the foot of the large tree beside their home.
Yan spends the rest of the day doing housework. She cleans up the bed after her husband soiled it.
She scrubs the bedsheets in solitude that night, before breaking down crying,
worried about her husband and her family's future.
That night, Yan pays a visit to The neighbor's uncle, a former shaman that used to specialize
in treating illnesses. However, the uncle turns Yan away, citing that he is retired,
and no longer a shaman. Eventually though, he changes his mind, and lets Yan in.
The uncle turns off the lights; and they sit on the floor. He lights a few candles, and brings
out a dish and some holy water. He pours the water into the dish, and dips a branch into it. He then
speaks, saying that there is a spirit attached to the large tree, beside Chong and Yan's home.
He pours the water back into the jug, and gives it to her. He instructs her to pour the water around
the base of the tree. He also gives her a kris, an ancient wavy-bladed dagger, and tells her to stab
it upright into the foot of the tree. Lastly, he tells Yan that if she finds any suspicious
items by the tree, she should take them, wrap them in black cloth, and cast them out into sea.
The uncle reminds Yan to keep their meeting a secret. Yan thanks him and returns home.
She pours the holy water around the tree as instructed, while The neighbor lights incense to
smoke the spirit out. The neighbor leaves; and Yan waits inside the house. She briefly falls asleep,
but soon wakes up upon hearing noises by the tree. High up in the tree, the spirit appears,
pulling the clotheslines to itself. Chong wakes up too, and tells Yan that
something is here. He tries to go out with Yan; but Yan stops him and goes out alone. She pulls
the kris out of the ground, and calls out to the spirit. She then finds the clothesline buried
in the ground, and pulls it up. At the end of the line is a statue of the god of the rice paddy.
Yan takes all of these, wraps it in black cloth, and even puts it in a basket for good measure.
She drives over to the port market. The spirit follows her, by clinging to the top
of the car. She arrives at the port, and asks the fishermen there to take her out to sea.
They decline; but a woman: a good samaritan, appears and offers to carry Yan into the water.
They set out; and Yan gets ready to throw the spirit's belongings into the water. She turns
to face the spirit behind her; but the woman stops her, and tells her to focus on what must be done.
She throws the items into the water, falling into the water in the process. While underwater, she
sees the statue of the god of the rice paddy. Fortunately, Yan returns to the boat safely.
Morning arrives; and she returns home. Her husband is seen staring out the window. He gets up for
the first time in three months, a sign of his impending recovery. Sometime after Chong recovers,
he starts practicing Shamanism to help locals. This is his way of paying it forward.
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