Angela Markado

The female-led revenge flick is a genre that has been around for a while now. It's been used as a meditation on the nature of vengeance (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, 2005 and Lady Snowblood, 1973, among others), used by directors such as Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black, 1968) to create a morally ambigious filmic landscape, as well as just being rip-roaring rampages of revenge (Kill Bill, 2003).

There's even a whole subgenre that which entails rape as part of the reasons for revenge, which includes the I Spit on Your Grave series. Its either an idea of women fighting back against a male dominated society or a male power fantasy depending on who you ask.

Based on a comic  series by Carlo J. Caparas, Angela Markado (2015) follows the formula of these films but ends up tripping on its own inadequacies and failing so spectacularly in every aspect of its creation that it's actually a marvel to see. It's made even worse by the fact that there is a perfectly good adaptation of the original source material by none other than Lino Brocka, starring Hilda Koronel; if you can find this version on the internet or on TV, stop reading this right now. Go ahead and watch that instead.

My reaction to the film is perhaps best personified when Sabel, daughter of one of the ranch hands in the film, rolls her eyes. Although in my case, if it were possible, my eyes would roll all the way to the back of my head. Bad CGI cityscapes, editing that was done to made the show feel like a bad SOCO episode, and random establishing shots are just the tip of the iceberg. One particular scene that stood out was a horse dragging scene that is obviously covered up by (bad) CGI and editing to hide the fact that without the post production work, it was 1) ridiculously fake and 2) poorly shot in the first place, and to top it all off, the end product doesn't even work, giving new meaning to 'we'll fix it in post prod.' Even candy coated poop is still poop.

I hold the belief that if one is going to make one of these kinds of movies, one mustn't hold back. The original film adaptation, through its sudden brutality, made us care for the character and her desire for revenge. In this case, the movie begins in medias res, and the brutal act feels hammy and very PG-13. I've seen school plays more graphic than this to be honest. In creating deaths through revenge, one could either make the deaths cathartic or make them reflect on our own thirst and/or satisfaction for vengeance. None of the death scenes for the five men are in any way imaginative; they consist mostly of Angela stabbing someone repeatedly. The movie tries to ruminate the repercussions of what Angela has done in the end, but it feels tacked on and the arguments it tries to make are not compelling. 

The greatest tragedy of this movie is the fact that looking at the people involved, there is a relative abundance of talent. Maybe someone or something brought out the worst in them to create this perfect storm of badness. In closing, this film has earned a unique distinction as one of this year's worst, here or abroad.