November 12, 2022
Exo (Elijah Canlas) and his girlfriend Amanda (Pheobe Walker) are the hosts and content creators of EXAM, a prank video channel on the internet. Despite their popularity, Exo became bored with their usual gigs, and began experimenting on solo projects behind Amanda's back. He consulted a fan Barry (Lucky Mercado) about his own website, and hooked up with vlogger Raiza (Katrina Dovey) for a sexy collaboration
One night, Exo answered a knock on his door and was abducted. He woke up confined in a dark unfamiliar room. There was a laptop computer beside him with a video from man dressed in black, wearing a leather hood mask adorned with metal studs. There was a wall behind him with various holes, chains and straps. Thinking it was just a prank, Exo played along at first. But soon he would realize that this situation he was in was not a joke at all.
The subgenre of horror films called 'torture porn" gained wider attention in the year 2004 with a little film by James Wan called "Saw". It was about two men who were kidnapped, trapped in a basement and forced to play deadly games by a masked man named Jigsaw. This film may have earned mixed reviews from critics, but ended up as a bonafide box office hit, launched its own franchise and influenced more copycats of its concept. "Escape Room" is a recent innovative variation of this theme.
Even if the story of "Livescream" was basically an adaptation of "Saw" and "Escape Room," this macabre, sadistic horror movie was something new for the local film industry. Even if we have seen violent torture scenes in Filipino movies before, they were usually in the context of war ("Oro, Plata, Mata"), Martial Law ("ML," "Katips"), or more recently, Vivamax ("Kaliwaan"). However, "Livescream" brings punishment torture into the realm in the digital age, while also highlighting man's instinctive struggle to survive against all odds.
We first saw Elijah Canlas as a 16-year old street kid in "Edward." He may already be 23 years old now, but it was still rather uneasy to see this boyish-looking actor in a long, totally gratuitous nude sex scene with a very daring 21 year-old Katrina Dovey, right off the bat in the opening credits. Canlas carried the rest of the film with his harrowing portrayal of this unlikable jerk's ordeal. His Exo suffered increasing intensities of disgust and humiliation and Canlas went all out, even it felt like director Perci Intalan held back a bit on execution.
Even so, the film still looked pretty slick with Moises Zee's cinematography. The music of Emerzon Texon was unsettling and creepy. The production design of Carmela Danao was disturbing and perverse. Anthony Falcon's deep voice gave Mr. Nice a palpable gravitas of dread and danger. Writer Dominic Lim sends a message against cruel and insensitive content creators who are willing to hurt real people just to look "cool" online. This is not for everybody, but those in need of a torture fix will get a kick out of it. 5/10.
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