directed by Erik Matti
written by Michiko Yamamoto, Erik Matti
Every year, starting from Christmas Day until the second week of the new year, residents of Metro Manila area "treated" to the annual Metro Manila Film Festival, during which all foreign movies are barred from release in movie theaters and only local movies, and those entered specifically in the festival, are screened for the public. Given that my movie entertainment usually consists of Hollywood-generated product, this is often a trying time for me (though lately, not so much, as I don't watch movies as often as I used to), but this year in particular, I was determined to go with the flow and basically just enjoy myself.
My wife and I agreed to a double-header; we would watch Erik Matti's Kubot and Dan Villegas' English Only Please, the only two movies on this year's roster we found appealing.
First up was Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles Part II, the sequel to 2012's Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles, a stylized action/horror/comedy hybrid that got rave reviews, and a movie that my wife and I were quite sorry to have missed. Needless to say, expectations were fairly high as we walked into the theater.
Kubot begins where Tiktik ends, with Makoy (Dingdong Dantes) Nestor (Joey Marquez) and the survivors from the first film hopping on a jeep to take them away from Pulupandan and home to Manila, when they are attacked by a band of strange, hairy-looking "kubot" or another form of aswang, who exact terrible revenge on Makoy for his slaughter of the Tiktik from the last film. Years later, sans a wife, a child and his right hand, Makoy lives with Nestor and his wife Nieves (Lotlot de Leon) in Manila, where he also works as a mechanic, when a new aswang menace emerges. It seems a group of aswangs led by the progressive, American-raised Doms (KC Montero) has a terrifying scheme which involves transforming people into aswang by feeding them hot dogs made from ground-up people and aswang saliva. A group of aswang friendly to people are willing to stop them, led by the youthful Dr. Lex (Isabelle Daza) but ultimately they will need the help of Makoy, who may or may not be willing to give it.
Now, I understand that we cannot expect Hollywood-quality visual effects from a local effort, for budgetary reasons if nothing else, but the problems I had with this film really had nothing to do with the computer-generated imagery. No, my problems were with the script that promised so much and yet delivered so little, some atrociously bad acting, and idea after idea cribbed from other action movies. The hero loses a hand and puts on a bad-ass, lethal prosthesis? How Sam Raimi. The hero faces down a whole bunch of bad guys in a dark and dingy corridor and takes them down with hand-to-hand fighting? How Gareth Evans. There are people-friendly aswang who have decided to feed on animals instead? How Stephanie Meyer. Slow-mo wire fu? How Wachowski siblings. And the list goes on. The fact that the movie does not take it seriously is definitely a plus point as it suggests that I might have seen references to all the films I mentioned, instead of plain old ripoffs. I want to believe that these were tongue-in-cheek, deliberate references rather than efforts to make the movie "kewl" with borrowed material, and maybe the fact that part of me does is what keeps me from giving this film a worse score.
Another aspect of the film that made it difficult to sit through was the horrible choice of villain in KC Montero. His inability to speak Tagalog properly may have been written into the script, but it didn't make his line delivery any less cringe-inducing to hear.
Fortunately, though, the film has some plus points: the whole plot of aswang trying to turn people into aswang by feeding them hot dogs is actually a brilliant jab at the processed food industry, which spends millions of pesos trying to convince us that hot dogs, which, to my knowledge, are made from God-only-knows-what, are safe for our children to consume on a daily basis. The scene where the health inspector pigs out on the bad guy's hot dogs and transforms in the process is a pretty funny highlight. Speaking of highlights, though, the scene in which Isabelle Daza's Lex summons her fellow aswang with a series of strange animal noises and dancing is, in a word, priceless. As funny as it is, it's actually integral to the plot as she basically saves their lives by doing it. Also, there's something utterly sexy about an attractive woman making a moderate fool of herself. I applaud Daza for being so incredibly game.
Another plus point, and one which is Matti's incredible ability to create atmosphere. The dingy Manila rooftop (Binondo, to be precise) where Makoy, Nestor and Nieves live is, for me, the best example of this. This particular location is perpetually filmed at night, and with its crumbling skyline it has a wonderfully grungy vibe that perfectly suits the grim and gritty vibe that a movie about fighting aswang should have. This is one of those instances where Matti's "indie" sensibility shines through; most of the film either is, or looks like it was shot on location, rather than in a sound studio (the first film was reportedly filmed entirely against green screen, a la 300), and the film is the better for it. Dingdong's extended monologue late in the film, which Matti filmed with multiple cameras to which he cuts several times, also has an "experimental cinema" vibe, though it didn't much appeal to me.
Overall, this film had the stink of "product" on it, almost as much as the hot dogs it decries, but enough of the director's quirks peek through to make me appreciate the better film hidden under all the least-common-denominator pap. I kind of long for the film that this could have been.
The film sets up another sequel, and as disappointing as this film was, I may give it a shot, even without the benefit of having no other movie to watch.
6/10
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