The mysterious disappearance of Jake Petersen rattles police officer Vincent (Vin Abrenica.) After all, the two had been close in their childhood; Vincent's mother worked as a tutor for Jake and the two were kind of like brothers in a sense.
Two years have passed and the case remains unsolved. This time, Vincent is investigating a spate of deaths involving GROs (that's club girls or hostesses to non-Filipino viewers.) In alternating sequences, we see who is responsible for these heinous crimes: Lance (Aljur Abrenica,) a man who stalks and captures these women almost at will. While Vincent slowly sets his sights on Lance, it becomes quite clear that something bonds the two together and Lance may have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of Jake Petersen...
On paper, Ray An Dulay's The Revelation sounds like an interesting concept. Serial killer stories are uncommon in Philippine cinema, partially because we don't see a lot of serial killers in real life. Lance's backstory is particularly well fleshed out: he has a pair of very dysfunctional parents and the method of his crimes follow a pattern that feels logically consistent with his own dysfunctions. He has his reasons as to why he kills the people he kills.
The problem with The Revelation, unfortunately, is almost everything else. For one, the film is badly edited. Establishing shots intrude upon several scenes, popping up in the weirdest of places. During a sex scene, the film inexplicably cuts to a shot of two birds. During a conversation, the scene cuts to various exterior drone shots of the place without rhyme or reason. Two separate chase scenes cut to what looks like the same shot of Vin Abrenica saying "nasaan ka na?" in a distressed tone. The editing felt like it was done by a bunch of amateurs.
For a police procedural, no thought seems to be given to how investigations actually work. One of the first scenes in such a procedural should be a rundown of all the victims and their manner of death, to establish the number of victims and manner of crimes committed. That type of scene happens near the middle of the film, right after Lance kills another person, making it seem repetitive. Not only that, but Vincent is in this scene and looks over the evidence and the dead bodies half naked. Why? Vincent's right hand man, Alex (Jelai Andres) goes undercover to keep tabs on Lance and on their very first date she blurts out that she is an NBI agent. And for some reason, it works! It's the stupidest (and apparently most effective) spycraft I've ever seen in a contemporary film.
The Revelation is a baffling film, one that I wouldn't recommend. It looks great on paper but the people behind it have botched nearly everything else.
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