Fairly atmospheric, visually creepy, and with a unique premise, A Thousand Days had the potential to be a downright terrifying Indonesian horror film. There’s something here about how rich families are willing to sacrifice impoverished young women in order to save one of their own, especially with the way the Atmojo family hasn’t given the full job details to the three girls in this film. There’s something here as well about how various Indonesian ethnic groups treat each other. However, the way the film arranged its scenes, as well as the film’s casting, fails to match the terror of the original Twitter thread that inspired the film. These choices take away some of the scariness that would have made Sewu Dino totally terrifying.

A Thousand Days has some creepy images that still prove to give the chills, but the way the plot plays out reduces those images’ effectiveness. We already get the sense of how the horror will turn out for these three women because its first ever scene fully shows what happened to the previous caretakers assigned. So even as we spot the really creepy Della, portrayed by Gisellma Firmansyah, we already know what’s going to play out. It also doesn’t help that the characters written here haven’t gotten a dynamic that would make us care about Sewu Dino’s plot twist.