Mawas Review: A very sweaty, very green walk through the woods

Is Mawas worth watching today? Only if you have a high tolerance for slow things and zero interest in a traditional plot. 🍃

If you like National Geographic but with fewer narrators and more quiet staring, you'll probably dig this. If you want a story with a beginning, middle, and end, you will hate it with a passion.

The whole thing is just a tour of the Malaysian jungles. That's it. That is the whole movie.

Kazuo Aoki is our guy on screen, and he mostly just looks tired and damp. I don't blame him, honestly.

Jack Jacobs is credited as the writer, but I'm pretty sure his script was just a napkin that said "Walk into the green stuff and look at a bird." 🌳

There is a lot of green. Like, so much green it starts to hurt your eyes after about twenty minutes.

The camera work is... let's call it "organic." It wobbles. It loses focus. It feels like your cousin filmed it on a dare while carrying a heavy backpack.

I noticed this one scene where a huge beetle crawls across a leaf and the camera just stays there. For a long, long time. 🪲

It doesn't try to be smart or deep like A Naked Soul. It just is what it is, which is a recording of a place.

Actually, it reminded me a bit of Un viaje por Galicia but way more humid and with fewer old stone buildings.

One thing that bugged me—literally—was the sound of the mosquitoes. They mixed the audio so loud I kept slapping my own neck thinking I was being bit. 🦟

The sweat on Aoki's forehead is very distracting. It catches the light in a way that makes him look like he's made of melted wax in some shots.

There's no big message here. No "meditation on nature" or anything fancy. Just a lot of trees and some vines.

It's definitely less exciting than something like The Huntress. Like, a lot less. There are no stakes here.

Stuff I noticed while watching:

• The cameraman definitely tripped at the 12-minute mark. They just kept it in the final cut.
• Aoki's backpack looks way too heavy for a casual day trip. What is in there? Bricks?
• That one bird sound that repeats every four minutes sounds like a squeaky gate.
• The way the light hits the ferns is actually kind of pretty if you don't think about the heat.
• I'm pretty sure I saw a crew member's shadow on a tree trunk at one point.

It’s not a "movie" movie. It's more like a window into a place you probably don't want to actually visit because of the bugs.

If you're bored and want to space out, it's fine. If you're already sleepy, it'll put you right to sleep. 😴

At one point, Aoki just stops and looks at the camera for a second. He looks like he wants to go home and take a cold shower.

I felt that. I really felt that deeply.

The ending isn't really an ending. They just stop walking and the screen goes black.

It’s a weirdly honest bit of filmmaking, even if it's boring as hell. No fake drama, just heat and plants.

If you enjoyed Phroso for the scenery, you might find something to like here, but don't expect any of the charm.

Just grab a cold drink before you start. You'll feel thirsty just watching them walk through that brush.