The realisation that Malay horror films did not conjure as much fear as the stories I've heard of it as a child or around the house has resulted in me wanting to find out whether other audiences feels the same way. I went to the closest person I know that is an avid horror film goer, my nephew. It is not surprising to know that he feels the same exact way as I do.
This then fuels my interest in wanting to enhance audiences experience when watching a Malay horror film next. This is the point where I begin my journey in searching for 'evidences' that would aid me in sparking that fear amongst Malay horror film audiences.
First, I went on searching for written evidences of Pontianak's existence in the library's archives. I should probably explain why Pontianak is chosen as a subject or in this case, entity of interest. I have recently watched the film Dendam Pontianak (Revenge of the Pontianak) on Netflix and found it unsatisfying. I wasn't a tad bit scared nor spooked by any of the sequences. This made me think of all the Pontianak films that I've watched and realising the endless amount of Pontianak renditions out there and how significant this entity is to the Malay culture. When discussing Malay horror the first thing that comes to mind is the Pontianak because of its synonymity towards the culture. We couldn't discuss Malay horror without reading, hearing or seeing Pontianak being mentioned. Therefore, Pontianak seem to be the perfect entity to start this journey of enhancing Malay horror film audience's experience.
One of the earliest written text about Pontianak was by Walter William Skeat in his book entitled Malay Magic. It is a vengeful spirit born out of a women who died during childbirth.
In Malay Magic Skeat said that the pontianak (or Mati-anak), as has already been said, is the stillborn child of the Langsuir, and its embodiment is like that of its mother, a kind of night-owl. (qtd Yunos, 89) Skeat then explained that if captured the Pontianak can be made “tame and indistinguishable from an ordinary woman” (by stuffing the neck-hole with her hair and cutting her nails) Skeat notes that the word “Pontianak” contains elements of “mati anak”, which means “dead child” in Bahasa Melayu, and therefore it follows that “Pon” is likely a corruption of the Malay “Puan” an honorific for Woman/Wife. So Pontianak literally means “Woman of a dead child”
The Pontianak, also know as Fatimah Rocker in the Malay community has been the talk of the town decades ago, it isn't surprising that it has such a vast amount of interpretations made of it, in a variety of mediums and media outlets. It is quite interesting to witness all the many different twists done by creatives in films.