January 10, 2024
Pong (Empoy Marquez) and his gay younger brother Gohan (Yanyan de Jesus) lived in a seaside village, where they operate their own family resort called "Sa Puso Ko." Their community had been ravaged by a virus that turned people into zombies, which would be spread by biting. Their barangay captain Kap Ben (Anjo Yllana) was very strict in monitoring the health condition of his constituents, so that the spread of the virus could be stemmed.
At that time, Pong was missing his lady love Yasmine (Kim Molina), who had left town without him. Suddenly, he thought of digging a hole in the sand, and found that Yasmine was buried alive, with signs that she had already turned into a zombie. Pong refused to believe that he had lost Yasmine, and tried his best to snap her memory back to normal by telling her stories about their time together, singing the song he wrote for her, seemingly to no avail.
Bobby Bonifacio Jr. is one of those directors who had made Vivamax their home in the past two years. To his credit, he was able to go beyond the soft-porn reputation, and directed critically-praised films like "Bula" (2022) and "Haliparot" (2023). His auspicious feature film directorial debut in 2006 had been in a serious horror, "Numbalikdiwa" (MY REVIEW), starring no less than Maricel Soriano. Now, he returns back to the genre where he started.
With Empoy Marquez in the lead, of course there will be elements of comedy in this film. He plays a simpleton who fell head over heels in love with a tourist, so got to do a lot of foolish things to win her over. However, the louder and campier comedy was care of Yanyan de Jesus, who played Gohan as a shrill and screamy scaredy-cat gay guy who nevertheless remained on Pong's side despite his crazy decisions.
As in her other films, Kim Molina is winsome whatever her role. Even here, when half of a time she was a killer zombie, and the other half seemingly a shameless user, she can still manage to get you to sympathize with her. It is easy to see why Pong loved her at first sight, despite not knowing anything about her, except that she sang well and tried hard to speak in French; and even after he already knew the whole truth about her.
To keep the proceedings interesting, director Bonifacio shifted the scenes back and forth from present (dark gloomy palette) to the past (bright sunshiny colors), with erratic effect. Bonifacio never tried to explain how zombification started, nor how there was an antidote. He also forgot to explain how, since she already left town earlier, how did the zombie Yasmine still end up buried under Pong's part of the beach for him to dig up? I think he may have missed one more flashback. 5/10.
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