January 17, 2024
Joy (Max Eigenmann) was a Filipina working as a caregiver and housekeeper in the United Kingdom for several years without a valid working visa. She was trying to pay a fixer to help her get her papers in order, so she needed a good job as soon as possible. One day, she accepted the generous offer of a woman named Katherine (Leanne Best), who hired her to take care of her barely-conscious grand-uncle Mr. Garrett (David Hayman).
While working at the Garrett mansion, Joy had to hide keep her pre-teen daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla) out of sight, lest she lose her high-paying job. However, the spirited Joy was impatient and simply could not keep still. Joy suspected that the condition Mr. Garrett was being worsened by his meds. So, when Katherine left for a trip for a few days, Joy decided to give Garrett a Filipino folk concoction to purge his system of toxins.
The talent of Max Eigenmann as an actress is well-known to Filipinos, given her award-winning performances in films like "Verdict" (2019) and "12 Weeks" (2022). Here, as the embattled Joy, Eigenmann had that resting intense face throughout the film, reflecting the constant uncertainty bugging her life those days. Eigenmann's face and eyes said volumes in that scene when Katherine was teaching Joy how to administer Garrett's pills.
Jaeden Boadilla's Grace was such a pain to watch as a parent. Having a child should be comfort for a mother, but a daughter as insolent as Grace added more stress. Leanne Best's Katherine was so mysterious, you never really understand what she was about until the very end. David Hayman is a veteran British character actor whose career dated back since the 1970s. His nuanced portrayal of Mr. Garrett proved that there were no small parts for him.
This film is a very odd entity. At its most basic, this was a drama of a Filipina mother trying to keep her goal of employment in the UK alive by all means, legal or not. However, because of the cinematic choices used by director Paris Zarcilla to tell this story with his odd camera angles and terrifying musical score, it wound up feeling like a horror film as he was intending. Zarcilla's "horror" styling underscored the horror of reality for people like Joy. 7/10
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