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| whoooo are you who who who who |
I promised myself I wouldn't do experimental film reviews too often, so this junk will suffice. It's not as insane as your normal experimental film review, so it will not be identified as such. But believe me, I seriously thought of making another one.
So, by the time this comes out, Paolo Bertola's The Lease will probably be no longer in cinemas. That's not a big problem, because you didn't miss anything substantial. The Lease is a derivative, barely cohesive mess that tries too hard to be scary.
The Lease draws from several other (better) horror films such as The Shining (1980), Poltergeist (1982), The Others (2001), It (2017) and your local school play (yearly.) Any creepiness the film has is overshadowed by the overall weirdness of everything else. The acting is generally horrendous, the special effects are middling at best (ironic, considering that this film's director works as a VFX guy) and the plot reads like bad fanfiction.
Don't take it from me, though, let's take a look at this lollercoaster of a movie in depth.
1. English Only, Please.
The film is about this family of four. There's Italian guy (Ruben Soriquez, who directed and starred in the equally horrendous Of Sinners and Saints), Garie Concepcion, young Boy and and young Girl. Like many horror movie protagonists, they are completely oblivious to how horror movie tropes work. They also always speak English for some reason. Considering that they've lived in Italy for many years, I assumed the family would be speaking Italian instead, but I guess it's 1) for the sake of convenience and 2) so that they could accommodate the director and Ruben Soriquez instead of the other way around.
(by the way Ruben Soriquez kinda looks like that guy from vsauce for some reason I dunno)
The thing is, all of the English lines are really awkward. Get ready for some gems like "oh girls, all this weird stuff all day." Especially notorious are the kids, who sound like almost lifelike androids instead of actual living children. Some would say it makes the movie creepier, I say it makes it more hilarious.
2. Send in the Clowns
Said English speaking Italian family of four settles into a villa, apparently to spend a little R and R. Immediately after settling in, weird shit starts to happen. Young girl finds a creepy doll named Jennifer. Did she name it herself? Nope, the doll named itself. Now any normal sane person would think that if a doll shows up out of the blue like that, talking in creepy whispers, it goes straight to the trash bin. BUT NO, not only does the girl think it's normal, so does everyone else in the family. They even get concerned when the doll goes missing.
Meanwhile, the young boy (who is saddled with the most awkward, robotic lines in the film) starts seeing strange clown pictures in his room. And the pictures are quite detailed; there's clearly some effort here. This is oil painting level shit. The mother sees the pictures in the boys room and is triggered by these pictures. Not because it's scary that the pictures appeared out of nowhere or anything, but because she's scarred of clowns.
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| think something like this level of quality. |
Italian guy then walks into the son's room and he immediately berates the son for, in his (paraphrased) words, "why the hell is [son] drawing more clown pictures, knowing that his mom is scared of them?"
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I HAVE SO MANY FUCKING QUESTIONS
1. So the Italian dad just assumed that the son drew (or should I say, painted) all of these pictures in a short span of time, without ANY art supplies in sight, instead of believing the kid?
2. Apparently, the son has painted creepy clown pictures to scare his mother before? Have they considered therapy or something for the poor kid?
3. WHY ARE THEY STILL SPEAKING AWKWARD ENGLISH
4. why did I waste 200 pesos on this film... oh wait that's right because I hate myself
Basically, everyone in this family is an idiot.
3. Stereotypes
Now here at Present Confusion, we try to avoid stereotyping people based on their race as part of our attempts to be more socially conscious. I feel that many local films try to do the same thing. But sometimes, you watch things like this.
Italian family is eating food. They need the nutrition, badly. Maid asks Italian guy if he wants some traditional Filipino food. Italian guy retorts, and I'm not shitting you guys here, with this gem:
"Oh thank you, all I ever eat in Italy are-a Pizza and-a Pasta."
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| my work is done here lol |
4. if you rip off from many sources its an homage.jpg
A little later, the young girl hears something going on downstairs. She goes down and sees that the TV is on. Ring any bells?
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| so, pretty much this. |
But surprise surprise, there's actually something on the TV instead of just static. In thee middle of the screen is a creepy clown. On the left is a sad cartoon character that looks old timey, perhaps a character from a game like Cuphead. On the right is obviously a gif of a character from the videogame Five Nights at Freddy's. I don't know if they secured any copyrights for these images, but I doubt it.
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| I have tried to recreate that image as best as I can. It kinda looks like this: (I made this in 5 minutes with Photoshop) |
Creepy Clown at the middle moves, and tries to suck in the small girl into the TV, complete with a creepy message on his balloon saying "I LOVE TO KILL YOU." The scary impact of the image is offset by the fact that it's written in the same grammatically awkward English that we've seen so far in this film.
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| I SPOOKY CLOWN! I WANT TO MAKE SCARY! OOOOOOOOO |
Thankfully, Italian dad manages to go down just in time to prevent anything bad from happening. The scary picture's text changes into "I Love You," but with the same creepy ass font, the same (ish) clown, and the fact that it appeared out of nowhere from a TV that opened BY ITSELF. These people should have died a long time ago IMO.
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| HOW IS THIS ANY LESS CREEPY!? |
5. Once upon a time in a villa far far away
More strange things start to happen.The pool starts to fill with food coloring blood for some reason. Creepy doll-related shit also happens in increasing amounts. Italian guy starts to see bloody footprints and ghostly images. For some reason, the ghostly images are colored a shade of blue and are staticky, almost like the holograms from Star Wars. Ruben Soriquez takes a shower, which is probably one of the last items in a list called "things I want to see".
The gang finally decide to see a spiritualist to find out what the fuck is going on. They go and have a little seance, and young girl decides to bring along Jennifer, the creepy doll from before. The doll wakes up and walks by itself (in reality, people are making the doll walk by moving its feet in the most low budget way possible) scaring the hell out of the spiritualist. She tells the family that she cannot do anything; the entity possessing the family is too powerful.
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| a powerful entity. Probably someone this guy would approve of |
Oh by the way, THE FAMILY STILL DOESN'T GET RID OF THE SCARY DOLL.
7. "I skipped six because I want to SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS" - R*** J*******
After more creepy occurrences (and after a couple of Google searches that go nowhere,) Italian guy and one of the caretakers decide to visit an old family friend. The old friend explains a couple of things: that 1) the doll is evil and must be destroyed, 2) the doll is evil because many decades ago it was involved in evil shenanigans and 3) the truth lies in the identity of the original owners of the house. After a lengthy, animated presentation, caretaker asks Italian guy: "naintindihan mo ba yung sinasabi niya?" (Did you understand what he just said?) And Italian guy responds with an emphatic no.
Well I guess we're done here lol
8. Exorcism via kung fu
While all of that is happening, the family STILL hasn't thrown away the doll because they are all idiots. Eventually, the doll actually possesses one of the housemaids. She starts to threaten the other people in the family with a knife, talking in that distinct distorted voice we usually hear in local cinema when someone is possessed.
Thankfully, Italian guy and caretaker dude sneak behind the girl and one of them karate chops the possessed girl in the back of the neck! The girl loses consciousness, which gives Italian guy enough time to get the cursed doll and throw it in a (poorly done CGI) fire. The ghosts seem to be exorcised, everyone's happy, movie over. Right?
NOPE.
9. why my brain hurt after watching this film
Italian guy tries to shake off the fact that something is wrong, but he can't, and he doesn't know why. Eventually he goes to the attic of the villa and finds the deed to the house. And brace yourselves, folks, because this is a giant infodump of a spoiler.
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As it turns out, Italian guy and his family were the original owners of the house all along!
I can hear you saying "what the actual fuck" right about now, so let me explain.
Apparently the villa was owned by Italian guy's mom. She has two kids: Italian guy, and his half brother Ernesto. Ernesto wants the villa because he just wants it (and because he thinks Italian guy is an illegitimate child). But mom gives it to Italian guy, perhaps to be a dick to her other son (and because Italian guy is nicer I guess).
Ernesto hires two goons to go into the house and steal the deed (which would still not make him the owner of the house, because it's in Italian guy's name, but whatever). These two goons wear clown masks (explaining the killer clowns), kill both Italian guy and his wife (explaining the Star Wars Hologram flashbacks) and inadvertently lock the two kids inside a closet. Said closet is not airtight, and the two kids could probably get out if they had a piece of paper or something to jimmy the latch loose, but since these kids are stupid they die of starvation (in the space of, like, a day.)
Ernesto finds all the carnage and berates his goons, shooting them. Their bodies fall into the pool (which explains the food coloring blood in the pool). He later finds the corpses of the dead stupid kids and in his guilt, commits sudoku via pistol.
So how has this ghost family interacted with people in the real world so far, you may ask? The film has an explanation for that, too:
There really was an actual family heading towards the villa - a family of exactly four people. While they were travelling on the road to the villa, their car crashes. Serendipitously, Italian guy and his ghost family were riding in a ghost car right behind them! The ghost car crashes into the real car, and the real family members were inadvertently possessed by Italian guy's ghost family. This real family is the family we've been seeing so far.
Makes perfect sense.
haha not really
1. So what does that make the long story about the doll that family friend told Italian guy? The one about the doll being haunted a long, long time ago? So that was just one giant red herring and the old friend was bullshitting them all?
2. Italian guy's family was from Italy, but not the real family. So why did the househelp not react to everyone speaking in weird English, or the fact that the dad kept talking about living in Italy for a long time? Did they not just know? Or didn't they ask questions because they were idiots?
3. Ghost families get ghost cars for free!? Why is there a ghost car in the first place? Why was there this whole setup of the ghost car crashing into the real car when Italian guy's family could have possessed the living family normally like normal ghosts?
4. Why is the film titled "The Lease" when the end credits say its title is "The Lease Bisperas?"
5. Why is "Silent Night" playing as the souls of Italian guy and co. asscend into heaven? Is this a Christmas film?
6. Why is The Lease an incoherent, shitty film?
... or is it?
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| hey vsauce Italian dad from The Lease here. HEYYYYY A PIZZA AND A PASTA |
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