Hegemony in Horror: Examining the Constructs of Fear in Siksa Kubur (2024)

Abstract

The present article reads Siksa Kubur (2024) as a film that does more than stage religious dread for generic thrills. It argues that, in its underlying logic, fear is treated as a cultural instrument through which moral authority is secured, consent is organized, and social boundaries are policed. To clarify how this mechanism works, the article brings Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra and hyperreality with Marxist and Gramscian accounts of hegemony. It conducts a qualitative semiotic analysis of selected scenes, key dialogues, and recurring visual motifs of religious horror. The analysis shows that circulates fear as simulacra: signs of divine retribution and grave torment appear to authorize themselves, gradually loosening their ties to empirical social conditions and acquiring a hyperreal force. In this register, the anticipation of afterlife punishment can feel more immediate than material suffering (abuse, inequality, or institutional neglect), so that horror functions as a persuasive grammar of discipline rather than a neutral genre effect. The study’s contribution lies in linking hegemony theory to a Baudrillardian account of simulation in order to specify the semiotic pathway by which doctrinal images are converted into experiential certainty and, in turn, into ideological consent.  Yet the film is not ideologically closed. Through Sita, it stages a limited but consequential disturbance, her skepticism marks a contested space where moral absolutism confronts modern doubt. Thus, Siksa Kubur positions Indonesian horror cinema as an ideological arena in which hyperreal fear can reproduce hegemonic governance while also exposing the tensions and fractures that haunt it.