September 6, 2024
TALAHIB
Writer and Director: Alvin Yapan
Two policemen, Bong (Joem Bascon) and Roman (Jess Mendoza) were investigating a murder scene in the tall grass field of still-undeveloped Springfield Subdivision. Later that night, they went with a group of teenagers led by Joyce (Gillian Vicencio) and Paul (Iyo Canlas), who wanted to do some digging under an acacia tree to find and a coffin that their parents buried there. Not long after, an unseen hand began to pull the kids' legs.
The way director Alvin Yapan staged his kills, a man with a dark face and sharp teeth (Dax Alejandro) emerged from a field of tall grass to slash the necks of his victims with a machete. However, forensics would rule these deaths as secondary to asphyxiation (something they never explained). The best kill was the first one with Myrna (Sue Prado) and her would-be rapist as victims. However, when the kids were being killed off one by one in the blood-spurting tall grass, you do not know them at all, so you do not really care.
It was the kids' vigilante parents who killed the killer who terrorized them by burying him alive, whose ghost is now terrorizing their teenagers -- a plot detail taken straight out of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). Yapan did insert a social commentary about greedy subdivision developers victimizing poor farmers, to set his story apart. The subplot about Stephen (Kristof Garcia), son of real estate tycoon (Johnny Revilla), fell flat and did not make sense. Among the young actors, it was only Gillian Vicencio who stood out acting-wise. 4/10
Writer and Director: Bryan Wong
Banjo Perez (Bryan Wong) was a soldier who was assigned to infiltrate the criminal organization of the notorious Franko as their best assassin. However, his cover was soon blown and they made him kill a masked hostage who turned out to be his own brother Marko (AJ Arobo). His officers tell Banjo that even if his identity was now known, he should not abandon his mission to kill Franko and everyone who stood in his way to reach that target.
The best scenes in this action movie are definitely the fight scenes with bare hands and knives, which Wong himself choreographed. The moves looked dangerous and deadly, and the sound effects editing made the viewers feel the punches hitting hard and the bones cracking and breaking. However, what was supposed to be the main showdown fight between Banjo and the maniacal Franko (Danilo Cutamora) was disappointingly too short.
Some drama scenes in English lapsing into Bisaya were performed so awkwardly that they became inadvertently entertaining. Banjo's melodramatic highlight was his tearful meeting with sister-in-law Maribel (Aryana Atibula), all the cheesy lines were delivered so over-the-top, sorry but I could not help laughing out loud. Based on the absurd ending with the motorcycle thieves, the humor in these scenes may actually be tongue-in-cheek and intentional. 4/10
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