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13 is 'Shake Rattle and Roll''s lucky number


It was with equal doses of hope and fear that I entered the cinema to watch “Shake Rattle and Roll 13” alone. I’m no jaded horror film viewer, local and otherwise, and it might even be safe to say that I’m this genre’s ideal spectator: easy to scare with stories of ghosts and the supernatural, gimme zombies anytime. But I’ve steered clear of this Regal Films franchise ever since (1) Chito Roño started making horror films, and (2) they went so low as to have a possessed Christmas tree–the latter would require one to be high on something to even approximate a reaction such as disgust.
 
But I had hope for this 13th installment because of three things–make that people: Richard Somes, Jerrald Tarrog and Chris Martinez. Give me independent film directors in an oft-lamented horror franchise, and you’ve got me pinning some hope on creative storytelling and a new way towards fear. 
 
These three weren’t one to disappoint. Somes’ “Tamawo” was surprisingly a believable pitch for mythical creatures rejected by both hell and heaven, and live as unseen shadows of a provincial feudal town. A family of four, central to which was a young boy (Bugoy Cariño) wishing for the love of his stepfather (Zanjoe Marudo), arrive to take the place of an elder who had died mysteriously; the Tamawo were the ones to think debt was transferable from one family member to the next. So as they threaten the nuclear family that also includes a blind mother (Maricar Reyes) and a newborn baby, what unravels is the power struggle between the young boy and his stepfather, the husband and wife, the ranch hand and ranch owner, making it even easier for the family to be torn apart by the Tamawo. The stepfather doesn’t listen to the boy, who knew compassion ahead of his years, and when it ends with a shift in their roles it is all logical and possible. 
 
Which is true for fear here, too, where strange ailments and insect infestation are reminiscent of folk provincial beliefs about disturbing the elements, where the beauty of the provincial melds quite logically and seamlessly with the dangers of hubris against what we do not see. It is in our provincial narratives, as it is just in the fear that’s within this movie. The stark white of the Tamawo, the long scary fingers, their speed, the sounds they make vis-à-vis especially the blind wife and mother was a brilliant element in this episode that allowed for a defenselessness that Reyes played to a tee. Ah, but that spit of a boy that is Cariño? Carried this movie on his tiny shoulders, up until that last glance at his mother. 
 
It would be the eyes too that becomes crucial to the transformation of two teenage girls from being conventional giggly best friends into the evil old rival witches that possess them. Tarrog’s “Parola” in fact lives off of the ability of its two lead actresses Kathryn Bernardo and Louise de los Reyes, who play Lucy and Shane, as they suffer in the aftermath of a fall from a possessed lighthouse and a family feud wrought by an affair between one’s father and the other’s mother. Yes, it seems too soap opera for comfort, but Tarrog is able to just use this as context for the rift between Lucy and Shane to grow, making it logical for them to let another rivalry come into the picture. That lighthouse stood for a long-standing feud between two mangkukulams (Julia Clarete and Dimples Romana) who killed off each other in the Spanish colonial era; they would have the easiest of times convincing Lucy and Shane to let them in.
 
And this is what makes Tarrog’s take on the whole spiritual possession story interesting: it is one of choice. That this also allows for the scarier moments in the film is the gift of imagination: other than the strange voices and sudden visions of either mangkukulam in the everyday lives of the two girls, it was when they were confrontational that worked at fear. In one scene Clarete’s mangkukulam encourages Lucy by revealing herself clawing through the ceiling, which then cuts to her trapping Lucy in a tight embrace on the bed. In another, Romana’s mangkukulam appears to Shane hiding under the sheets, telling her that her life’s in danger.
 
The storytelling is swift, and this narrative maintains the story—without belaboring the travails—of teenage friendship and rivalry, one that’s about security and insecurity both, with a cute boy (Sam Concepcion) thrown in for good measure. But when things come to a head, it is just the two girls, finding they are the best of friends despite the fact of possession, the struggle between good and evil happening only as they shift from poison to compassion in their eyes. Bernardo here is given the meatier, angrier half of the friendship, and surprisingly plays the evil well. 
 
Now it is evil too, though not exactly the kind you expect, that’s in Martinez’s “Rain Rain Go Away.” Working from the tragedy that was Ondoy, what this episode proves is that in the hands of unbridled creativity, what can be created is a movie that’s about as controlled as they come in these shores. The sparse cast had but the married couple Cynthia (Eugene Domingo) and Mar (Jay Manalo), who lose their first child in the stress that was brought by the storm. They were celebrating their anniversary then, monitoring home and business over the phone: Cynthia talking to their scared maid wading through waist-deep waters, and Mar talking to his mother who is screaming from their plastics factory to get as much of their goods loaded onto a truck. 
 
These images are crucial because a year hence, Mar and Cynthia have recovered from the storm, the former running his family’s plastics factory again with a younger brother, the complaints about lazy workers part and parcel of conversation. But Cynthia has since become scared of the rain and the flood it brings, something that living high up in a condominium appeases. Except that she seems to perennially have water trouble, the faucet refuses to work or pipes seem to break and spew out water. But of course all of these happen only when she’s alone, and in that sense could be a product of her fears. 
 
But this phobia is also part of the set of water-related deaths and mysteries that leads to the grand reveal of ghosts that had been haunting Cynthia via water, ghosts she thought they had buried along with the losses of the storm a year hence. But what she and her husband’s family had buried was the story of real workers’ lives, the ones they neglected to save from the flood. Here is where Martinez outdoes himself as the aspect of worker abuse is revealed to be at the core of the fear and violence that’s here, even as it is not discussed as such or at length. And when it ends the way it does, one knows that the lack of forgiveness is valid, the truth of such abuse warrants this anger. 
 
Which it seems, and finally, Cynthia was ready for, payback was more than a douse of cold water, but you know what they say about payback. Here Domingo reminds us that more than being a comedienne she is ultimately an actress, her acting able to transcend our expectation of laughter after the first couple of scenes. But what carries this episode is really Martinez’s vision of horror as something that need not involve over-the-top screaming, or of ghosts just appearing, but really as something that’s about us and the things we silence coming back to haunt us. Especially and particularly when it involves the oppressions that allow us to exist, these truths are more horrific than fiction. 
 
Meanwhile, that “Shake Rattle and Roll 13” was fiction that largely went unappreciated in the mainstream (i.e., versus blogger reviews), is a sad thing given its competent set of actors, given its take on the Pinoy horror film. Especially at a time when the more self-centered among us can proclaim that she is the Meryll Streep (!!!) of Pinoy horror. 
 
Que horror. –KG, GMA News
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