Oh, Indonesian cinema!

You keep getting our hopes up, tackling Western or International genres on film, often getting the look and some of the basics right but never quite closing the deal.

I’ve reviewed scores of Indonesian films over the years, and even taking into account cultural differences (an Islamic country), with films that take a chaste view of romance, action that’s a tad tepid and drama that can be downright dainty, I’ve always found them just too tentative and slow-footed to enjoy.

As there’s little online audience for reviews of such Around the World with Netflix films, I’ve been avoiding Indonesian fare for a while now. But “Monster” seems somewhat Indonesia-proof, at least in concept.

It’s a movie almost totally devoid of dialogue, which lets the visuals tell the story.

“Monster” is a kids-in-jeopardy thriller, two tweens kidnapped by the title character for purposes never made wholly clear — something do to with video, perhaps streaming child porn? Couldn’t get that past censors? Thrill-killings on camera? Kids cut up for cannibalism?

The children must fight their captor, work the problem and escape or die. That’s simplicity itself.

And it’s a remake of “The Boy Behind the Door,” a Shudder release of a couple of years back. Netflix likes buying intellectual properties (scripts) and remaking them in many of the languages and cultures Netflix services. So director Rako Prijanto and adapter Alim Sudio know, more or less, how this is supposed to go, where the frights are and how they can be manufactured. Not that the original film was all that.

But after a promising start, “Monster” settles into a lurching pace that underscore every hokey situation, every illogical “escape” and “That makes no sense” scripted blunder.

It’s got a few suspenseful moments, a couple of early jolts and chills. Then the whole enterprise morphs into an 84 minute long ordeal.

Bib sister Alana (Anantya Kirana, pretty good) notes the creep (Alex Abad) trailing her and her brother Rabin (Sultan Hamongan) from school, and hears the thumping and cries after the bearded weirdo has stuffed the kid into the trunk of his Toyota Crown after luring Rabin out out of the arcade.

Alana finds herself nabbed as well, duct-taped, bound and gagged.

The story’s first act has Rabin facing something like his fate with the most unhurried serial kidnapper/killer ever, and Alana starting that process of “working the problem.”

She bloodies herself freeing first an eye, then her hands and then herself. She doesn’t run for help, as they’re plainly in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. She goes back for her brother, hiding right behind the video-game addict kidnapper as he settles onto the couch to play, ducking into roach-infested cabinets to hide, trying to figure out which of the plot’s (guessing here) seven keychains has the key to open this or that door, Rabin’s shackles, etc.

She gulps for air in panic, at times. Rabin yelps at his plight. But nobody’s in a hurry.

Even after the kidnapper, who “forgot” Alana was still (supposedly) in the trunk figures out he’s being watched and schemed against, he can’t force himself to act swiftly, decisively and logically.

That hobbles the comically drawn-out second and third acts and ends any hope this might be an Indonesian thriller that plays or travels.

Write it off to cultural differences if you want, but if cinema is an international language, thrillers must translate high stakes and building suspense to work pretty much any where in the world. A quicking pace is generally how this is managed.

Aren’t they teaching that in Indonesian film schools?

Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking

Cast: Anantya Kirana, Sultan Hamongan, Alex Abad and Marsha Timothy

Credits: Directed by Rako Prijanto, scripted by Alim Sudio, based on the script to “The Boy Behind the Door,” by Justin Powell and David Charbonier. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:24