Attack of the Mud People

Movie Review
Signos
Directed by Aloysius Adlawan

Sometimes you just want a horror film to be a horror film. You want to get scared out of your wits, and go out thinking "I shouldn’t have bloody steak for dinner." You don’t come out, thinking, "What just happened?" You ought to have a ready answer, like, "Lycans went berserk on a small town until the reluctant antihero rallied survivors and exterminated the lot," or "Ghost psychiatrist helps child get over psychic issues and quits haunting wife," or "Bratz dolls come alive! Alive!!"

"Signos," written and directed by Alfred Aloysius Adlawan, has a chilling soundtrack, well-executed shots in low light, and spectacular mood. The locations are authentic. The establishing shots are terrific (a sunset on an "ordinary" mountain town — why not?).

The acting is pretty good - particularly dependent on the lead’s eyes and spare movements. The dialogue is well-written, there’s humor at the right moments, you have a genuine feel of Filipino colloquialisms, and it manages to give a backgrounder in just a few sentences.

That’s hard to pull off when you’re going for more depth into the character without sounding stilted. But what kills it for me is that I just can’t imagine how mud turns people into zombies.

In a nutshell, the movie follows a successful young architect, Luisito (Luis Alandy), as he returns to his provincial hometown, Brgy. Salvacion, after receiving word that his father Ulding (Ricky Davao) has had a heart attack. When Luis reaches the homestead, a mountain inn gone to seed, he finds out his father is alright, that it was a "prank text message."

The father-and-son relationship is strained because Luis has been unable to accept his father’s remarriage and barely tolerates his father’s second family. Also, Luis has practically turned his back on his hometown, has seen little of his childhood friend Nestor, and abandoned his old girlfriend Elma (Chx Alcala) to marry city girl Sandra (Nancy Castiglione).

Elma is the latest in a series of mysterious deaths at Salvacion, and in the course of finding out what happened to her, Luis is forced to confront his past, and a lot of mud-covered weirdos.

The scenes that speak of Luis’s estrangement from his old self and his old life, his painful coming to grips with his father’s new wife and family, are the strongest.

The horrific scenes, although effective, aren’t entirely convincing. Casting suspicion on a living person responsible for the deaths, such as the widowed photojournalist Maureen (Nicollete Belle) staying at the inn, and on Nestor — his love for a woman in love with his best friend twisted up inside him — are unnecessary buildup, if what you’re left with is mere premonition.

The premise is that certain townspeople had to die to foreshadow a greater tragedy, a natural calamity. Why hint of the supernatural when the resolution is something entirely natural?

Are the townspeople being punished for not "heeding the signs?" What of those townspeople who were the symbols? What did they do to merit being the sacrificial lambs? Why isn’t there a kinder warning, and who is doing the warning in the first place? (These questions are usually answered by the town witch or warlock, a missing character in this movie).

Why is Luis saved — just so he can remember all those that he lost, regret those he abandoned?

In which case, this needn’t have been a horror film, but a straightforward "return and renewal," a delayed homecoming that became the final homecoming. The horror was meant to hook — it would have been a bigger gamble to knock off the zombie mud people and stick to a storyline about a man who had to sacrifice much to be successful and had to sacrifice much more to regain his roots.


	© 2009 BusinessWorld Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us.

Cinema

Story tools

Cinema

Attack of the Mud People

Movie Review Signos Directed by Aloysius Adlawan

Movie Review
Signos
Directed by Aloysius Adlawan