February 27, 2025
Audrey (Iza Calzado) brought her daughters Ali (Ashley Sarmiento) and Agatha (Erin Espiritu) to an old house located in a remote forested area near a spring. This was a property that her husband Ed had inherited from his family. Ed spent months on his business trips to Baltimore, and Ali blamed her mother for driving him away from them. Audrey had invited her friends James (Jake Taylor) and Liv (Inka Magnaye) to check the property out with her that day.
Since Ed's relatives who used to live there were all dead, the property was being maintained by caretaker Lydia (Dimples Romana). She was a widow with three children -- Gani (Marco Masa), Pepin (Erika Clemente) and the autistic youngest child Nita (Althea Ruedas). When Audrey noted several talismans hanging at the windows, Lydia told her how the whole property was being inhabited by "ancient beings" which they needed to respect.
The last film Shugo Praico wrote and directed was the MMFF thriller "Nanahimik ang Gabi" (2022) for which he earned good reviews. Praico was better known for being a writer - especially for TV dramas involving children as lead character, like "May Bukas Pa" (2009), "100 Days to Heaven" (2011) and "Nathaniel" (2015). Praico co-wrote "The Caretakers" with John Carlo Pacala, who also co-wrote the acclaimed "Bagman" series (2019) with him.
The premise of "The Caretakers" was actually quite interesting, and its advocacy for humans to respect and care for Mother Earth was loud and clear. The way Praico interwove aspects of local folk beliefs and recognition of indigenous traditional grounds to the cold urban lifestyle of millennials and the melodramatic twists of Audrey's family issues was compelling, in their jarring contrast when laid out side by side with each other.
Iza Calzado and Dimples Romana, being the reliable veterans that they are, played off each other very well as Audrey and Lydia face off with their conflicting intentions. There were some illogicalities which were easy to forgive, like how seemingly unschooled Lydia and kids were able to understand the English of Audrey and kids. But the main problem for me was the confusing ending -- what exactly was the final message of Earth mother Mayang there? 7/10
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