Here's an interesting situation: two local films, two directors - one who started out making varied, high concept films, the other born and raised in genre cinema. We'll be talking about both their movies today.
Eerie takes place in a all girls' Catholic school, no stranger to horror films from all around the world (looking at you, Whispering Corridors.) A mysterious spate of deaths has the administration and students reeling; the local handyman and janitor is arrested for the crimes. But did he really do it? Pat Consolacion (Bea Alonzo) thinks there is more to the crime than meets the eye. As it turns out, she can see dead people - and the dead people are telling a different story.
Gorgeously shot and well-acted, Eerie feels at first like a conceptual slam dunk. Similar to films like Aparisyon (2012), it uses the sheltered and restrictive milieu of a convent/religious school to depict institutions that are willingly blind to and are built on abuse. This is the true monster of Eerie, and this monster nurtures and spawns destructive, murderous children. Abuse leads to fear; the normalization of violence leads to people internalizing that violence. The body and mind become wounded in the process, and these wounds spread to everyone, like a malignant cancer that does not stop.
But of course, a message does not a movie make (at least, not by itself.) Eerie checks all the boxes of a standard Asian horror film, but nothing else. It's framed in darkness, but does little to take advantage of that darkness, as its atmosphere never really builds up to anything substantial or engaging. Its scares mostly depend on a number of jump scares, whose frequency and sameness lead me to boredom and annoyance. This will likely be dependent on the viewer, as I am the kind of person that tries to find something new in horror films. After all, haunted houses aren't as scary if you know what's coming next. Genre film is no joke, and relying on safety isn't always the best course of action. Eerie is a middling horror film at best; a well-shot, well-acted film that falls victim to relying on safe and bland horror storytelling tropes.
In terms of expectations, action is a wholly different creature compared to horror. While a horror film is rendered impotent by a feeling of sameness, all an action flick needs to do is to be well staged and to look cool and it will be better than most action films out there. In this particular case, Pedring Lopez's Maria meets the criteria.
Maria (Christine Reyes) is a loving mother and wife. Her husband works for a well-liked politician who legitimately looks like he serves the people. However, that job puts him and his family in jeopardy: the Black Rose drug cartel wants the politician dead, and they'll kill everyone up the ladder to the top. This puts Maria's husband directly in their sights, which leads to tragic results. Soon Maria will have no choice but to return to her dark past and confront her demons once and for all.
Following off the heels of genre exercises like 2017's Darkroom and 2015's cheesy but entertaining Nilalang, Maria is Pedring Lopez's take on the female led action revenge thriller. Storywise, everyone's pretty busy: while Maria is on her roaring rampage of revenge, there are internal squabbles within the Black Rose cartel. There's a early 2000s cheesiness and/or hamminess to the whole enterprise that I find immensely enjoyable. It's not as in depth or as loaded as, say, The Raid 2, but like I said before, in action films, action is king.
And action is where Maria shines. Christine Reyes put in the work for this movie, and it shows. Lopez knows the ebb and flow of action scenes and shoots them well, mixing hand to hand combat, melee weapons and gunplay in his numerous action scenes. Extra points go to the fact that Lopez doesn't rely on fast cuts or edits to convey ferocity - he has the actor (in most cases, Christine Reyes) do it for him. That simple fact elevates this above most other local action films I've seen since last year. His staging of long takes is really impressive as well, drawing from a wide array of equally fun action sequences from other movies.
The film does have its share of faults - it's quite dark in some places (though that's probably more the fault of the cinema projection rather than the movie itself) and the movie ends with one hell of a cliffhanger. It also would've been a bit better if the film had tied up some more loose ends, or, at the very least, addressed some nagging plot questions. What happened to that politician? Is he really as good as Maria's husband says he is? What's going to happen to Black Rose now? What's Maria and co. going to do after all this? Despite all this, Maria is a really fun ride, as it knows exactly what it is, and it stays in its element from start to finish.
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