Hasan leaves his rural Central Java home due to a strained relationship with his mother, Dayu, and travels to Jakarta to pursue a career as a psychologist. He is married to Nina and has two children, Tasha and Ryan. [Nina] had just lost her mother to illness and believes she decapitated herself with a knife. Dayu's dementia is worsening, and a caretaker notes the troubling, almost supernatural turn of events around her.
At Nina's request, fearing her mother's fate might mirror Dayu's, Hasan reluctantly brings the family to Dayu's home to move her to Jakarta. But Dayu resists the idea, and Hasan leaves his family temporarily on a work assignment, sparking a chill of unease that will linger over the household. Paranormal activity edges into their days: Dayu is heard saying a chilling phrase, and a shadow seems to drift through rooms at random. > Ari Kibar
Dayu also attempts to cut herself, deepening the fear that the elder woman is slipping away under inexplicable forces. One day, she drinks the ginger tea Nina prepared and dies under circumstances that resist easy explanation, leaving the family stunned and unsettled by the sudden tragedy.
Nina, unsettled by what she suspects is more than dementia, follows a caretaker when the woman leaves a village path and enters a remote house. She discovers that the caretaker is not real and instead unearths a collection of news clippings that reveal Hasan had a friend named Dimas. The discovery deepens the mystery: why would Hasan and Dimas be so eager to impress Dayu, and what secret were they guarding?
The investigation also clarifies the meaning of the cryptic phrase that haunted Dayu, with the revelation that “Ari Kibar” translates to “Arah kiblat” or the direction of the qibla. In Dayu’s home, the heading points toward a tree, where human bones lie buried, a macabre hint that ties the living to a long-buried secret from the past.
Back in the house, Hasan confesses that he and Dimas used to obsessively try to win Dayu’s favor with their supposed talents. In a violent confrontation that follows, Hasan kills Dimas with a knife, a deed that casts a long shadow over everyone involved. Dayu attempts to shield the truth from Dimas’ family, choosing silence over reckoning, but Nina refuses to let the deception stand.
With her children in tow, Nina attempts to flee Hasan’s escalating menace, and his own desperate, violent impulse metastasizes into a plan to kill her. While Nina is packing, Hasan strangles her, but a neighbor—someone connected to Dimas—overhears the confession and intervenes, killing Hasan with a spade. By dawn, Hasan and Dimas are laid to rest, their past actions finally buried with them, as the family begins to reckon with the consequences of secrets kept too long.
