Tag Archives: formula in film

kultura

Beyond the horror

I’m a sucker for the Pinoy horror film formula: a scary setting, well-done sound design, the gulat factor. I’m the person in the cinema who will scream first, and the loudest, the person who is so ready to be scared.

But of course the fear factor is only one of many aspects of the horror film, and one realizes given the effort that is put into a movie like Seklusyon (directed by Erik Matti, written by Anton C. Santamaria), that there is more to doing good horror than just getting an audience scared shitless. And certainly the cinematography, the context, the narrative itself of Seklusyon is enough to warrant some of the awards it has won: it speaks of the evil within us, the fears that haunt us, given the lives we live. It speaks of how in a Catholic country like the Philippines, the good is trumped by what is easy, and it is the false saviors that might be biggest enemy. (more…)

kultura

hello, i love you (goodbye!)

Or when Derek Ramsey just ain’t enough.

There are many good things about I Love You Goodbye really, including of course the fact that Derek Ramsey exists in it at all. It did want to talk about the travails of a May-December affair, as it did try to highlight the problematique of class when it comes to love, as it did use as premise the necessity of migration in the creation of a young Filipino couple’s dreams. With all of these issues integral to its plot, this movie could’ve undoubtedly gone beyond the usual commercial movie formula — something I always have high hopes for.

But this movie, more than anything, is proof of how a badly written story, is really just a badly written story, despite all efforts at making it more substantial – and even when the only meat you get is some of Derek’s bare naked back.

A well-written story after all, requires a complexity in its characters that this movie doesn’t have. You prove this through the fact that it was most difficult to suspend disbelief about someone Gabby Concepcion’s age (what, in his 40s?) falling for someone Angelica Panganiban’s age (in her 20s), alongside the fact that Angelica was a waitress and he a doctor; or that someone Derek Ramsey’s age would even imagine using someone who looks sixteen (Kim Chiu, yes despite the thick make-up and more mature clothes) to get to Angelica, who was the love he left behind. Even the whole Kim-Chiu-is-now-an-adult was a stretch here. (more…)