The Road (2011)

Minggu, 11 Desember 2011

The Road (2011)

The Road (Yam Laranas, 2011)

The first of the three episodes of Yam Laranas’ The Road is the most reminiscent of the atmospheric thrills of Sigaw (The Echo, 2004). One night in 2008, three teenagers (Barbie Forteza, Lexi Fernandez and Derrick Monasterio) find an abandoned dirt road to practice driving. As they move further from the junction, a suspicious red car passes by them every so often. After noticing that the red car is without a driver, they hurriedly find their way back to the junction, but to no avail. They are trapped, and continuously haunted by the mysterious red car and a woman whose bloodied head is covered by a plastic bag.

The episode, set mostly at night in an abandoned road lighted only by the moon and headlights of occasional cars, relies on mood, on the presumed danger of being alone amidst omens and apparitions, to work and Laranas, a horror stylist here more than anything, creates an atmosphere of quiet but certain hostility.

The second and third episodes, set ten years prior to each other, forgo of the phantasmagoric for the more visceral. Physical and psychological torments, as opposed to the supernatural one of the first episode, are in the forefront. In 1998, two sisters (Rhiann Ramos and Louise de los Reyes) find themselves prisoners in the house of a disturbed man (Alden Richards). In 1988, a boy (Renz Valerio) is brought up by his domineering mother (Carmina Villaroel) and his religiously zealous father (Marvin Agustin).

From the grim greys of the abandoned road, Laranas expands his palette, creating a canvas of lush and inviting colors that only downplay the depravities that are depicted. Tying the three episodes together is the informally accepted mission of a recently promoted cop (TJ Trinidad) to investigate the case of the missing sisters from 1998.

Where in Sigaw, the violent deaths of a mother and child in the hands of an overly jealous cop has transformed their apartment building into a time-trapped capsule where the tortures and the assaults are repeated forever, in The Road, the abandoned road meets the same fate, time-trapped by victims of abject cruelty. Laranas’ ghosts are not troubled spirits thirsting for revenge. They are imprints of a violent past, perpetual footmarks in a place vandalized by vile intentions.

Laranas’ ambitious mapping of the place’s history of brutality inevitably leads to loopholes in the story’s logic and perhaps in the logic of the characters involved. Questions arise and most of them are left carelessly unanswered. However, there is more to the film than its flimsily crafted narrative web. In the scope of what Laranas attempts to achieve, he more or less delivers a story that notwithstanding the multitude of its lapses, coheres with a laudable vision of violence that by its very nature and the extent of its corruption, disrespects the laws of both place and time.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

The Echo (2008)

Senin, 02 November 2009

The Echo (2008)

The Echo (Yam Laranas, 2008)

My biggest gripe with regards to remakes, whether they are Hollywood remakes of Asian films or the other way around, is that I simply cannot fathom the unpalatable wastage of both talent and money that is used to merely translate what supposedly is a universal narrative to suit cultural smugness. The once-lucrative business of remaking Asian horror films, those quiet and atmospheric thrillers produced and released in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Thailand that usually feature long-haired spooks killing people through curses (best examples of which like Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), Kairo (Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001) and Shutter (Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2004) are often reflections of the malaise of our consistently modern world) into Hollywood blockbusters, more often than not transporting the subject matter of the horror to suit the American landscape (with the exception of the remake to Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (2004), where he has American expatriates being chased by Japanese ghosts in Tokyo) have produced a number of embarrassing duds. Predictably, the fad has come to its well-deserved rest. This leaves some remakes that were mounted during the tail-end of the fad without any public interest, consequently lessening its commercial viability.

Yam Laranas' The Echo, the Hollywood remake of his own Sigaw (The Echo, 2004), is sadly one of the victims of the dissipation of the fad. Instead of getting a proper run at the theaters, it was released directly to video, except in a few territories where it got a festival run or a few weeks at the theaters. It's a shame. While admittedly problematic, The Echo, assessed independently of its clever source material, is a tautly made ghost story. Laranas, a cinematographer before he ventured on directing (his masterful cinematography for Raymond Red's mysteriously enigmatic Bayani (Heroes, 1992) created for the film an atmosphere of endless possibilities within Red's alternate history milieu), manages to sustain prolonged moments of silence through an assured control of the visuals. The camera (through the film's cinematographer Matthew Irving) wafts through the hallways of the ancient apartment building, observant of each and every curiosity, from its peculiar denizens to its discomforting emptiness, that adds personality to the structure. The story unfolds at a turtle-speed pace; as if nothing is happening until the film's prolonged reliance on sullen mood and atmosphere gives way to a culminating series of shocks, chills, and panic.

Screenwriters Eric Bernt and Shintaro Shimosawa updates the screenplay of Laranas and Roy Iglesias to suit the alienating ambience of New York City. Instead of the newly independent twenty-something (played with matinée idol efficiency by Richard Gutierrez) who purchases the haunted apartment for very cheap, a paroled ex-convict (Jesse Bradford) who returns to the apartment of his mother, whom he abandoned for several years and has died mysteriously, only to be bothered by strange sounds and apparitions. It is quite an interesting update. Bradford's ex-convict is a pathetic character. Plucked from the penitentiary where he spent several years without any contact from the outside world and into the big city, he struggles to regain the life he lost when he accidentally killed a man who harassed his then-girlfriend (Amelia Warner). Just when he manages to get his act together (he lands a job in a car repair shop and somewhat wins his ex-girlfriend back), the haunting reaches a severity that becomes more threatening than occasional screeches and scratches from the apartment next door.

The machinations that lead to the character's fate of being inescapably guilt-ridden is a reminder of the web that inevitably connects all humanity despite our conscious efforts to disassociate; we are essentially bound by the evil that we create and choose to ignore. Where Sigaw was more intimate in its horror, with the ghost choosing to haunt through timelines because of a single individual's indifference (a character from the past that was thankfully completely scrapped out of the remake) to another person's pleas for help, The Echo chose to expand its horrors and becomes accusatory of humanity's inherent capacity for indifference, probably brought about by an alarming level of callousness to evil. Although preachy as placed during the film's revelatory stage, the witness from the building across talks of this undoubted connection between each and every one of us and despite that, the greatest sin this connectivity, especially in a city where people's dwellings are usually separated only by walls, is that humanity has developed a capacity to merely watch, stay connected, without choosing to get involved, probably out of fear, or worse, a general lack of concern.

The film's expansion to indict all of humanity for the sins of the murderously violent husband (Kevin Durand) against his poor wife (Iza Calzado) and kid (Jamie Bloch) seems to have given the ghosts a reason to harm and kill people, an update I thought was only done only to satisfy the requisites of the genre but did not really improve the film (except for certain exceptional scare pieces). It is more unsettling that the ghosts are just there, reminding the people they choose to haunt that they exist, and in turn, turning these people's lives into palpable nightmares (in Sigaw, the couple decides to just escape by watching a movie but even inside the comforting confines of the theater, where everyone else is enjoying themselves, they remain haunted). The several deaths become an excess, completely unnecessary because it pulls us away from the drama of the ex-convict whose life problems are only enunciated by the hauntings. Nevertheless, The Echo, with its sad fate of being lumped together with films that its producers deem unworthy to receive a chance at the box office, is actually quite good.

Sigaw (2004)

Jumat, 02 November 2007

Sigaw (2004)

Sigaw (Yam Laranas, 2004)
English Title: The Echo

Yam Laranas' Sigaw was released during the yearly Metro Manila Film Festival, a two week-long affair wherein all of the country's big studios release their big-budgeted features. The festival that year had a very poor line-up (the three best pictures that year were Joel Lamangan's Mano Po 3: My Love, a tiring continuation of the pint-sized tales of Filipino-Chinese romantics, Cesar Montano's Panaghoy sa Suba (The Call of the River), another sappy tale of patriotism and romance during the Pacific War, and Lamangan's Aishite Imasu (Mahal Kita) 1941 (I Love You 1941), about a transvestite spy falling in love with a Japanese general and a sorry wife who wages her own war against the Japanese invaders. Despite the poor line-up of films, Sigaw didn't get much critical attention aside from a few citations on its production merits. Years later and with much help from Laranas' marketing ingenuity, the film is up for a Hollywood remake (also to be directed by Yaranas) and is now regarded as a classic in the genre.

Does it deserve its current status or is it one of those films whose reputation precedes its actual merits? I'd like to think that it does. Laranas is a gifted cinematographer. I believe he is one of the reason why Raymond Red's Bayani (Heroes, 1992) has that distinct look which turns the film from being simply a film about patriots into an intriguingly surreal version of a well-known portion of Filipino history. His previous films (Balahibong Pusa (Cat Hairs, 2001), Radyo (Radio, 2001), Hibla (Thread, 2002)), not exactly masterpieces in storytelling, are all very alluring to look at. Laranas, who is also cinematographer for Sigaw, feeds the feature with tons of mood and atmosphere; during the first few frames of the film, we are entreated to foreboding views of a concrete building and its interiors tinged with otherworldly hues.

The set-up is excellent, reminiscent of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (2002) where a decrepit apartment building becomes the fitting setting of a ghost story. In Sigaw, the building is home to a couple, a violent cop (Jomari Yllana) and his pitiful wife (Iza Calzado), and their daughter (Ella Guevara). Their nightly fights and the wife's constant pleas for help disturb Marvin (Richard Gutierrez), a newbie to the building who just acquired his unit for a steal. The story, conceived by Laranas and Roy Iglesias, unfolds succinctly. We first witness one of the couple's more violent episodes. The abusive dialogue, the threats of physical harm accompanied by loud noises of bangings and gunshots are repeated throughout the feature; apart from the conventional shocks and scares (quite effectively done --- Marvin wakes up to blood dripping on his face revealing a bloodied ghost floating above him, or when Marvin and his girlfriend (Angel Locsin) are inside a movie theater and the same ghost starts gliding to them), it is the inauspicious air of domestic violence that makes Sigaw truly terrifying.

Sigaw zeroes in on brutality against women and children, a theme fascinatingly weaved into the film. The repetitiveness, which encompasses both the nightly aural and visual hauntings and the time-enduring manifestations which is against the real and logical assertions of our temporal concept, alludes to the violent act itself. Such brutality is cyclical in its nature. In its most afflictive, its symptoms consist of a vicious circle of physical, mental and emotional violence followed by moments of tenderness, repeated over and over again, trapping the victim perpetually until she tries to escape herself. The ghost story in Sigaw is intertwined with the concept and the effects of such physical and psychological abuse; that these traumatic murders caused by severe beatings and verbal abuse is a logical enough reason to commit the hauntings (mostly the most violent episodes recurring ad infinitum) permanently, at least until a drastic change happens.

This brings me to one of the film's more glaring flaws, the casting of Jomari Yllana as the savage husband. He isn't phsyically apt for the role nor is his acting impressive enough for us to forego his physical deficiencies. Alongside statuesque actress Iza Calzado, he doesn't seem imposing or daunting enough to elicit actual fear. He broods too much and his drunken ruthlessness and brutality is too mannered to be dire. If the role were given to someone more physically terrifying (an ugly, monstrous brute) or someone who can transform tremendously beyond his physical frame (perhaps Ronnie Lazaro, who plays the drunken caretaker of the apartment building), the effect would be much clearer and the distress will be more palpable and believable.

Sigaw is not great horror (although its admittedly a good one), and the fact of its being remade by Hollywood is not reason enough to delegate it the status of a classic. However, it is satisfyingly moody and atmospheric, and beneath all the jumps, scares, and celluloid-committed dread is a convincing subtext. Hopefully, that doesn't get lost in translation.