Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino | Salvage works best when it subverts its genre

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's Salvage begins with images of manufactured reality: a staged recreation by media, a commercial featuring "genuine" versus "fake" soap. There's a notion of reality and unreality that pervades the film from beginning to end, and Salvage plays with this in interesting ways. We are repeatedly made to question the truth or untruth of what is unfolding around us. In today's world, we experience this struggle between real and unreal daily in the form of fake news or propaganda.

Salvage masquerades under the guise of a found footage film; it's about a team of reporters investigating a series of murders linked to aswang. But as they trudge deeper into the forests of Cagayan de Oro, the movie begins to evolve, and the film begins to leave its genre trappings.

Salvage's images evoke both emotions and memories. A clear and palpable sense of dread watches over the film like a ghoulish spectre. Images both gruesome and surreal evoke the film's many themes: the troubled and acrimonious relationship between journalists and the military, the increasing militarization of the provinces, stark memories of the Maguindanao massacre, even a lingering condescension by the imperialist capital towards what they view as their backwards neighbors to the south. These images challenge what we usually expect from these types of films: instead of recreating these emotions and memories with something grounded in reality, Salvage's images are fantastical and bizarre.

Salvage may sometimes be bogged down by the genre it is trying to escape, the film often finding a reason for one of the characters to keep the camera rolling to maintain the film's identity as a found footage film. The characters are also not averse to behaving in line with established horror tropes, at least in the first half.

But everything changes in the last 15-20 minutes of the film. The line between reality and unreality completely disappears, and the film's subversiveness reaches its limit. Filled with images from a fever dream, Salvage's final sequence is one of the most haunting cinematic sequences in recent memory.

A challenging, imaginative film, Salvage works best when it subverts its genre. It may be held down by genre constraints, at least for the first half, but by the end it manages to become something far more profound.

***

Salvage should be accompanied by a short film, but to be honest I was late and didn't catch the short, if there was one. Maybe next time.

EDIT: after rewatching Salvage yesterday (Aug 21) I manged to catch the short film attached to the film, Shaded. It's a nice companion piece to Salvage, considering its themes. It's also pretty straightforward. The character at the end oversold it a bit at the end, I think.