My friend Anne and I started a new horror blog, and I’ve moved my review of Paranormal Activity to www.horrornut.net.

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My friend Anne and I started a new horror movie blog, and I’ve moved my review of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist to www.horrornut.net.

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When I discovered that Dante Nico Garcia’s Ploning would be the official Philippine entry for the Best Foreign Film category of the 81st Academy Awards, I felt iffy about the whole idea of sending any Filipino movies to the Oscars in general. I’m no expert on Philippine cinema but the way I see it, movies designed to be commercially successful among foreign audiences have to be one of two things: either it will show nothing but exaggerated “squalor squalor squalor” (to quote Dr. J Neil Garcia) or it will show the Philippines as a tropical island paradise minus the depressing reality of squalor squalor squalor.

On the one hand, it can be argued that, yes, squalor squalor squalor is the way the rest of the world should see us because the reality of poverty is difficult to ignore. While I do believe that those who see the Philippines (either through movies or an actual visit) should also get a glimpse of the indescribable poverty plaguing the country, a movie that lingers too long on the poverty angle would be the socio-political equivalent of a horror movie. Except instead of zombies we have street children, lepers ten families in a shack, all producing the same shock and horror effect on the audience. It’s bad enough that they get to live under inhuman conditions; now we have to fetishize them and turn them into a freak show too.

On the other hand, you can also say, “Why must we be so negative when our country is so beautiful despite the poverty and exploitation? Let’s get away from all this negativity and show the rest of the world how rich we are in natural resources!” So local and foreign audiences get bombarded with postcard-perfect after postcard-perfect image of our beaches, mountain ranges, and rainforests (jungles?). And we get so bedazzled by all that beauty that we forget to ask ourselves crucial questions about audience, perspective, and intention. Who are the people who get to enjoy the beauty of the Philippines? Is it the Filipinos who live in those postcard-perfect areas, the Filipinos who eventually end up being employees of resorts? The Filipinos from the Manila who can afford to enjoy them? The foreigners who come to the Philipipnes to enjoy not just the country’s beauty but the Filipino/as themselves? When showing these images, who are we really making the country look so beautiful for? And for what purpose?

I bring this up because Ploning is one of those impressive, picture-perfect movies that could easily mislead audiences into thinking that life in the Philippines is quaint, easy, and peaceful. The cinematography was so well done that if you paused the movie at any point, the frozen picture would have look gorgeous on your living room wall. Based on the visuals alone, I could easily see why any Filipino would be proud to show Ploning to a foreign audience (hey look, we’re not all about squalor here!).

Warning: spoilers ahead.

Plot-wise and dialogue-wise, however, the movie was a huge disappointment. Set in the director’s simple, seaside hometown of Cuyo, Palawan, Ploning is a non-linear narrative centered around a quiet woman named Ploning (Judy Ann Santos) and her motherly relations with a young boy Digo. The movie begins with the grown-up Digo returning to Cuyo after a 25-year absence – but you’re not supposed to know that yet. He walks around town with a native guide and as he visits familiar places, flashbacks occur from the perspective of his five-year old self.

Technically speaking, the flashbacks and the cuts were very clean and fluid; plot-wise, it was a headache. Names and characters start popping out of nowhere and it took me a while before I figured out what was really going on, who was related to who, and in what way. So apparently Digo has a mother who can’t walk, and Ploning decided to be something like a surrogate mom to him. Towards the end of the movie, Digo accidentally gets lost in sea, a woman makes a cringe-worthy melodramatic monologue lamenting the death of her son (not Digo), characters start crying, and we discover that the boy Digo was rescued by a Taiwanese sailor and that he has somehow found his way back to Cuyo over two decades later.

The synopsis I gave above makes it seem like Ploning is Digo’s story, but most of the imagery is actually devoted to Ploning, who for some reason is always better dressed than the rest of the women in Cuyo. I don’t particularly like nor dislike Judy Ann Santos but I found her – or rather, her representation of the character – incredibly irritating. For one thing, her eyes were always wide with concern and kindness. Every time she looked at Digo or another character with those wide wide eyes, I half-hoped that she would get slapped for looking like such a tool. She also doesn’t say much except to give pithy advice about romantic love, God, and death, and I hated how the rest of the characters were always going on and on about how kind she is and how much pain she must be hiding underneath her quiet exterior. If Ploning is supposed to represent the Philippines to a worldwide audience, then Ploning (the character) is the representation of Filipino women. And I’ll be damned before I ever let this kind, simple, God-loving cliche of a Filipino woman represent me.

Reality check: Filipino women don’t really spend a lot of time
frolicking in flowered dresses

After the movie, director Dante Nico Garcia and two other crew members (the other screenwriter and the production designer, I think) came up on stage for an open forum. Only then did I come to appreciate what Ploning was trying to do – which is actually a bad thing. When you need the director to explain why this device was used and what that scene meant, the movie fails as a work of art because it couldn’t reveal the creator’s vision on its own.

One of the things that Garcia clarified is that they did not create Ploning with the intention of marketing the film to a foreign audience. Boy, was I relieved; I’d hate to have anyone deliberately portray Philippine “reality” in a way that would sell. Apparently, his true intention was to create a film spoken entirely in the Cuyonon language, which is being spoken less and less by the natives of Cuyo due to the influence of cable TV shows in English. He was hoping to make Filipinos more aware of the language and to help the Cuyonons feel more proud about the language by having an all-star cast speak like natives. I suppose the mass audience also explains all the unnecessary melodrama too.

The director’s second intention was to tailor-fit a movie to his longtime friend, the actress Judy Ann Santos. If she could not be Ploning, there would not have been a Ploning movie, he said. I disagree. Ploning the character is so flat, predictable, and lifeless; any Filipina with wide eyes and a flowered dress could have been easily played the part. No previous acting experience required.

Despite my misgivings about the film, I actually think Ploning might have a shot at getting nominated into the Oscars, if only because foreign audiences might find the cheesy dialogue and the melodrama quaint. Or maybe they’ll be too blown away by the visuals to notice. I only hope that they’ll be a smart, discerning audience who won’t end up idealizing the Philippines as a tropical paradise peopled with kind, God-loving, simple folk.

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Supernatural horror films–the ones that involve Japanese women crawling out of the TV or peering at you from under the covers–scare me the most, because my imagination is horribly vivid and I can actually see those ghostly figures in my bedroom, in the dark. I usually avoid ghost movies unless I’m feeling unusually masochistic, or am in the mood to make my fellow moviegoers go deaf. I’ve been told that my operatic shrieks of terror has the potential to break ear-drums.

My favorite sub-category of horror is something I like to refer to as gore-ror (I’m not clever enough to have coined the term; I believe I picked it up from someone). They’re usually psychological horror films or films with minor supernatural elements that are characterized by extreme violence. I’m talking about skulls being crushed open, people being skinned alive, zombies being torn to shreds, humans being devoured by the undead. Nothing makes me jump up and down in my seat like an overactive five-year old than watching someone’s guts spilling on the floor. The more violent the movie is, the happier I am.

One of my favorite gore-ror movies is a little-known film called May. It’s about this girl who couldn’t make friends as a child because of a facial deformity. As an adult, she tries desperately to form friendships and relationships but fails at this due to her lack of social experience. What I love about this movie (spoiler alert: you might want to scroll down to the YouTube video below) is how she kills off all her friends and her ex-boyfriend, chops off their limbs, and sews them up into one big doll. “If you can’t find a friend, make one,” was her mother’s advice as a child. I found that whole mass murder scene very, very satisfying. Like May, I too chop off parts of people that I find beautiful and sew them up to create my ideal person. Unlike May, however, I only do this figuratively. :P My ideal person (or ideal guy, if you will) is an intricate combination of so many parts from so many people that my biggest fear that he only exists in my head. But I’m young and I’ve only been single for a few months–I’m in no real hurry to make my creation come to life.

Another reason why I love May is because my future husband Jeremy Sisto (Billy from Six Feet Under) is in it, oozing with more sex and manliness than usual. Those broad shoulders! His large, gorgeous, hands! Those shapely lips! His fuck-me curly hair! Jeremy Sisto could use my face to shine his shoes and I’d walk away feeling like a million dollars.

Upon deeper reflection, I think my recent fascination for gore-ror flicks is a result of my quarter-life crisis. Whenever I watch arteries spraying blood and intestines hanging out of people’s stomachs, I can feel every little insecurity I have about myself leave my body and join the blood on the walls. The sight of blood in real life makes me want to vomit, but gore-ror films never make me sick to my stomach. They allow me to live out my deviant thoughts in a more socially-accepted manner. When the credits roll, I feel as clean and pure as a newborn baby, ready to grab the world by the balls (and stuff them down its throat).

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If the Silent Hill game frightened me so much that I couldn’t play it at night, the movie version requires you to sit next to a loved one so that you might have someone to cling to in moments of terror. It’s the kind of film that might look like just another horror movie for one who has never even heard of the game. As a fan of the series, I had a great time watching Silent Hill on the big screen. It wasn’t just that the monsters were terrifying, the overall visuals made me shiver, and the tense atmosphere kept my heart pounding for two hours. The fact that there were (convincing) flesh-and-blood actors instead of CG characters made me experience the sheer what-the-fuckness of the situation they were in – something that the game has never really given me.

Silent Hill gave me more than just my money’s worth and a wonderful time. I even picked up a couple of life lessons from the movie:

[1] Never adopt a kid, unless you know every single detail about his/her family origins. For all you know, your adopted child might be more demonic than the average kid in more ways than one.

[2] If you insisted on adopting a kid anyway, and you find that your kid sleepwalks and has dreams about a haunted place, do not take your child to the said place. Put him/her in a hospital instead. Or tie him/her to the bed at night. Or something.

[3] Always carry a weapon of sorts with you, be it a rock or a lead pipe. You never know when you’ll stumble upon a nightmare of a town crawling with monsters.

[4] When dealing with religious fanatics, keep in mind that you’ll always lose because you can’t reason with the stupid.

[5] After going through such an earth-shattering adventure, life will never be the same. No matter how much you try, things won’t go back to normal.

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Then again, maybe I’m not supposed to understand the mysteries behind Suicide Club because I’m not Japanese, or at least, not learned enough in Japanese culture and their way of thinking. I mean, I only found out through my friend, Rina (who spent a year in Japan), that Spirited Away was really about girls who end up in brothels whether they like it or not. Before that, I thought it was just..you know. A cute Japanese movie. If you look at it this way, I suppose this explains why all the Japanese movies I’ve seen never really made complete sense to me.

Can I just say that yesterday was the worst first day of school ever? Save for the Cultural Retellings class, I am dreading every class I signed up for this semester.

I’d elaborate more on this but really, what’s the point? Bitching about it won’t change the fact that I got stuck with this year’s ditziest Asian History class because the History department screwed me over. Yay me.

I finally got the flu for the first time this year.

It’s a little embarassing to admit, but I do want to watch the Harry Potter movie. I told Pat, who is the only total anti-Harry Potter person I know, and he agreed to accompany me under the condition that I pay for his movie ticket. Fair enough, I suppose. We’re probably watching in an inexpensive theater, then.

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