JANUARY 16 — I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the steady decline in box-office takings for Malaysian films continued in 2015. After three years of roaring business, which began in 2011 (RM108.36 million from 42 films), dropping slightly in 2012 (RM84 million from 73 films) but picking up again in 2013 (RM85.08 million from 71 films), 2014 has already seen the numbers drop significantly with a box-office total of RM74.6 million from 81 films, which looks even worse when you consider that RM17.2 million of that comes from just one film, The Journey.

A total of RM57.4 million from 80 films does present a significant slump in 2014 but imagine how bad it looks now that 2015 also saw a release of 80 films, but with a box-office total of only RM52.2 million. And that includes the biggest Malaysian film of all time, Polis Evo, which brought in RM17.4 million. 

Take that out of the equation and you’ll have RM34.8 million from 79 films, which leaves a gross box-office average of only RM440,000 per film. With most Malaysian films budgeted around RM1 million to RM1.5 million, imagine how scary these numbers are for Malaysian film producers and what a nightmare year 2015 has been for them.

Hits are so few and far between that out of 80 films, only 8 managed to bring in more than RM1 million at the box-office. If 2014 saw 5 films that failed to even break RM30,000 at the box-office and 11 that didn’t even manage to ring in RM100,000 at the box-office, 2015 saw 14 that couldn’t even bring in RM30,000 and 26 films that failed to cross the RM100,000 mark. Grim, isn’t it?

The box-office numbers got worse as the year wore on with 5 out of the 8 films that crossed the RM1 million mark belonging more to the first quarter of 2015, and not even its first half as the 5th film to do so, Pilot Café, was released in April 2015. What happened next was a barren 5 months as 27 Malaysian films were released to truly indifferent audience reaction, with only 2 out of those 27 films managing to cross the RM500,000 mark, before Polis Evo finally arrived to save the day on September 17, 2015. 

Even with the ripples of excitement caused by Polis Evo’s totally unexpected box-office performance, only 2 other films managed to cross the RM1 million mark after it, one of which, Juvana 2 — Terperangkap Dalam Kebebasan, being a sequel to a hit film that was a continuation of a popular TV show.

Even Chinese language films, normally a steady source of box-office income, have stumbled badly this year with 18 films released and only My Papa Rich crossing the RM1 million mark with a box-office of RM3 million, making it the second best Malaysian box-office performer this year after Polis Evo.

Imagine how demotivating all this is for an avid observer and supporter of the Malaysian film industry like yours truly. Unlike 2014, which at least saw a variety of good and well made films, from mainstream comedies like Abang Long Fadil, CEO and Dollah Superstar to indie and arthouse oriented titles like Lelaki Harapan Dunia, Terbaik Dari Langit and Cuak, not to mention the quite excellent horror flick Cerita Hantu Malaysia, which made compiling a top 10 list of 2014 Malaysian films not too hard an exercise, the 2015 pickings are so slim that one might even struggle to compile a Top 5 list for Malaysian films in 2015.

So you can’t even construct a narrative of a steady increase in quality and craft that’s yet to be recognized by the movie-going public. Like it or not, 2015 was a disappointing year both in terms of box-office and quality. 

Years and years of assaulting the Malaysian audience’s intelligence with quickies, cheapies and substandard products that sometimes don’t even belong on local TV, let alone the big screen, have finally bore fruit this year. We are here, in this mess, because we deserve to be here. We asked for it.

Polis Evo is, of course, the obvious bright spot in this depressing year for Malaysian cinema, clearly demonstrating that if you do a formula film right, with the right level of professionalism and craft, the audience will come. Love, Supermoon is also another very bright spot in the mainstream film scene, with writer-director Wan Hasliza Wan Zainuddin (A woman! Which is of course a fact that’s missed by many observers of Malaysian film by virtue of their allergy to commercial Malaysian flicks) delivering a rom-com that’s both sweet, funny and kind of epic in its journey following its protagonists from high school to adulthood.

Then we have this year’s indie cause célèbre, the local Tamil film Jagat, which became the talk of Malaysian netizens everywhere, even those who don’t usually go to see Malaysian films in cinemas. Going head to head with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it’s obvious that trying to find a cinema that shows Jagat in the middle of Star Wars mania is not going to be easy, and even though I feel that the film is slightly overrated by its many champions, mainly due to editing and pacing problems, mostly because the director (understandably) tried to put in as many issues about the Indian community as possible, Jagat is a laudable achievement exactly because of the many issues it highlights, which is not something you get to encounter every day.

But if we’re talking about socially conscious Malaysian cinema, however, my personal favourite remains the criminally-ignored Papa’s Shoe (a box-office total of RM8,623 is all you need to know about how little-seen this film is). A Chinese film directed by an Indian, M. Subash, who’s also a Muslim convert, is about as Malaysian as a film can get, and its story about two little schoolgirls abandoned by their dad, which plays like a blend of Nobody Knows and After This Our Exile, is told with a beautifully understated and heart-wrenching economy.

What does this all mean for us in 2016? Hopefully nothing. We’re set to witness Ola Bola later this month, and there’s every chance that it might even challenge Polis Evo and The Journey at the top of the Malaysian all time box-office charts. There’s still Pekak, Interchange and even the Boboiboy movie to come, and God knows what other surprises may be in store for us this year. One can only hope and believe, and with a year this bad already behind us, why can’t it get a lot better, right?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.