please come in

Nothing prepared me for the boldness and elegance of Prime Cruz’s “Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B.” It has all the elements of a regular horror flick—a recognizable myth, a moody atmosphere, two attractive leads. What veers it away from standard Filipino work of this genre is how it entirely rewrites what we expect. There are long deliberate pauses here that would make an audience uncomfortable, especially those who have been conditioned by jump scares, screams, and cries. It is no easy task, but Ryza Cenon’s Jewel and Martin del Rosario’s Nico carry these silences into a heightened performance, such as an exquisite display of an arched back here or a slumped shoulder there. It is all about the body. For a movie with a mythological self-segmenting creature in its title, it should be about the body. And one can identify that this movie leans heavily on vampire retellings like Tomas Afredson’s “Let The Right One In”—primal, brooding, sensual. It is unapologetic on how it handles sexuality, particularly female sexuality, which is a welcome surprise in this country still steeped in machismo and misogyny. This is evident in Jewel’s transformation, how her sprouting of wings is like giving birth to a new life. Although it is difficult for her, considering her newfound attraction to Nico, her decision to still go after fresh meat is wholly her own. In the Age of Trump and Duterte, the urge to inject a political slant into entertainment has become more recurring than ever that it now resembles some form of moral duty. “Manananggal” is not spared from these intimations; it has chosen a hot timely crisis (of which I won’t divulge), and yet for all its good intentions, it has not fully enriched or broadened the discussion to greater effect. In fact, it has muddled “the important politicized idea” even further. But thinking about it now, it looks like that is the point of the movie. The whole world is now a mess, and for most people who do not know what to do, aside from ignoring or screaming at each other, the wise thing to do is to straighten up our act and pick up the pieces—such as the viscera of a manananggal’s latest victim.

[photo borrowed from this site]