Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles 2

The most winsome aspect of The Erik Matti Film is how the filmmaker’s thorough observations and own filmic preoccupations coalesce in finely textured entertainments. This is somewhat true to Tiktik (‘12), the hor-com which this film succeeds—a beast spliced between the gnawing terrors of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the slick comic appeal of films like Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1993); and true, more so, to his recent Cannes-exportation On the Job (’13) which greatly recalls the action films of Johnnie To and builds a fatalist view of our corrupt society. The first Aswang Chronicles similarly echoes the warring clans of the south and their feuds’ endless loops, sucking in all by force, those in consanguinity and not.

The second film, titled Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles 2, is resonant for the same reason: the observer Matti remains relentless in one sketch after another without losing sight of his duties as the entertainer Matti. Upon leaving the cartoonish stylistics of Tiktik, Matti fares onto an entirely new outré that is needlessly virtual, leeching off of the allegorical and satiric power of cartoons—a pair of inept cops, a hoard of greedy bystanders, and a ravenous leader of an aswang* emporium (played with palpable enthusiasm by K.C. Montero). While some may deem this wildfire of commentary wayward, others perfunctory, I think it as Matti’s editorial ‘featurettes’ on the inevitable corruptions of man, the stuff one gobbles up on daily broadsheets, and at which one laughs, perhaps in spirit, with Matti.

Set mostly in Chinatown, Manila, Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles 2 is an obvious ode to neon-lined Asian thrillers—grubby set-pieces, viridescent tint of nightlights, and the romantics in elaborate, slow motion fight scenes. The film’s enduring hero, Makoy (Dingdong Dantes), dwells atop a rundown building. He wields a steampunk MacGyver-like knuckle and bides time until hopefully the horrors he had witnessed in Pulupandan evanesce. But, as his zany sister (a wildly energetic Lotlot De Leon) explains, his family has a most primitive way of getting themselves into trouble, and not long they are entangled in a feud amongst aswang clans. One pursues the turning of humans into their own; the other clan preserves the co-existence of aswangs with humans. This is an admirable effort to introduce an entire universe where there are sinister-looking aswangs (headed by an ever-excellent Elizabeth Oropesa) wielding fatal, age-old tresses.

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*aswangs are creatures from the Philippine mythology. They have been described in many times and ways, taking a different physicality in each case or archetype of an aswang. But a simplified definition ventures that an aswang “refers specifically to a ghoulish were-dog.” Sort of a fusion between vampire and werewolf, they consume human flesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1DwiavxmnI

This post is cross-published in my personal blog, Manong Mando.