January 2, 2025
After her recently deceased father Pabling was buried, Monet had the "pasiyam" (nine-day prayers for the dead) held in their old house. Her husband Jack (JC Santos) had business out of town, so Monet was only left with her young son Keith (Kian Co), loyal helpers Frida (Donna Cariaga) and Henri (Nico Antonio), and her short-tempered, over-protective mother Rosa (Lorna Tolentino) with her during this stressful time.
Among the things Jack left behind was a eerie-looking painting of a scarecrow in the middle of a field. The next day, Pabling's bitter and demanding legal wife Adele (Chanda Romero) marched into the house, together with her two children, Roy (Mon Confiado) and Andie (Janice de Belen), wanting to sell the properties which she claimed. However, people in the house began disappearing one by one in mysterious circumstances.
In her first film in 5 years, Judy Ann Santos shows that she hasn't lost her touch for nuanced internal acting in her portrayal of long-suffering martyr Monet. Lorna Tolentino shone her moments of fearsome rage, but the true nature of her Rosa was quite obvious from the start. In contrast, the fabulous Chanda Romero played the furious Adele to the hilt of camp, especially in that nauseating scene when something was coming out of her mouth.
When the characters here started dying in bizarre ways, one was reminded of director Chito Rono's acclaimed horror classic -- "Feng Shui" (2004), and we recognize how Roño was and is such a master of this genre. However, instead of being preceded by Chinese zodiac creatures, the deaths this time feature various farmland pests -- giving these scenes a definite squeamish feeling of disgust. It was quite distracting though why Rono allowed one of the deaths to break the pattern and did not involve a pest.
Even if this was the first full-length horror written by Chris Martinez, fans can still catch his sassy witticisms peppered along the way here. This was especially true in the scenes featuring the shaman Georgia, played by Eugene Domingo. Martinez's script was written with juicy convolutions and stunning revelations. However, I felt that final detail about a Chinese businessman to be too much, which made the third act prone to plot holes. 7/10
Thank you po.
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