February 2, 2024
Interior designer Melanie (Angeli Khang) and her boyfriend, gym owner Martin (Albie Casino) decided to live together in the new townhouse that he had bought. To celebrate the occasion, they invited her cousin and best friend Angie (Sheila Snow) and his brother Leo (Van Allen Ong) who was visiting from Australia. Everything was going on very well at first, but with time, Martin became demanding, exerting undue pressure on Melanie.
Meanwhile, Leo began obsessing about Melanie, using his graphic design skills to insert himself into her photos. Later, he actually began sending gifts and flowers to her, and even boldly professed his love for her. One day, Melanie encountered a stalker (Itan Rosales) who threatened her in the parking lot. He was apparently a young man whom she led on and left behind while drunk in a party, and wanted to finished what she started.
One can easily see why Angeli Khang is the most in-demand female star on Vivamax, with her knack for drama and camp, on top of her pretty face. With that perpetual bad boy look on his face, Albie Casino can never escape the typecasting in these types of roles, like Martin. Van Allen Ong made the most of his major role as Leo. He breezed through his long nerdy lines in English, and cheesy sentences like "Tonight I celebrate my love for you."
This is Jeffrey Hidalgo's fourth film on Vivamax as director. The story and screenplay was by veteran Raquel Villavicencio, the same writer of iconic Filipino films like "Kisapmata" (1981), "Batch '81" (1982), and "Relasyon" (1982). Unfortunately, she was nowhere near that mode when she wrote this. The last time Hidalgo and Villavicencio worked together was in Vivamax's "Lampas Langit" (2022) (MY REVIEW). That one was much better than this one.
The title was already a dead giveaway about what was going to happen here. The ending was foreshadowed by some early banter between the two brothers about their rivalry. Hidalgo still tried to make the final sequence a mystery, never showing the face of the man with a rifle. Truth is, there was not a shred of suspense at all about his identity at all. Vivamax viewers familiar with these violent endings all knew who it was, well ahead of the reveal. 2/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment