Betrayal underlies the conflict in most of Jun Lana’s films. Whether it’s prejudice or acts of sheer deceit—one woman is berated by her own people, another shred into halves by her own nation—the hurt of betrayal in his films rams the atmosphere. Perci Intalan’s debut feature Dementia, whose screenplay is co-written by him, is a story of a woman betrayed not of her nightmarish past, but of the mental deficiency which afflicts her. It’s oddly alluring—these acts of betrayal—the sting of which, through his films, we share and we endure.
In his new film Haunted Mansion, the betrayed woman is a high schooler who lives past an incident that kills her father. This we learn midway through the film in which Ella (played by Janella Salvador) confesses to her friend Adrian (Marlo Mortel, doomed through his choice of roles to a perpetuated friendzone) that she’d been able to communicate with spirits, and learning it she did the hard way. The manner by which her character is presented in the film, however, takes her for the doll protagonist prevalent in tween horror films—naive of her beauty, ignorant of her supernatural singularity until bodies literally start piling around her.
There’s that trio of tongue-tied cheerleaders—if they speak English, fine, they speak English! My sympathies go to the varsity team who I imagine had to make every thing out of their cheers. They’re flat-out bullies, the kind that’s written for movies just because. And when there’s attempt to pepper their insipid characters—one side-bully makes out with a jockish airhead who happens to be the other side-bully’s boyfriend—it burns bad. In short, Ella exists in that kind of horror film where teen dimwits are stuck in a situation completely not suited for the dimwitted. The people around her, bullies or not, are mere plot devices; numbers to the woman in black’s kill count.
Maybe you’d like context, but you don’t need to.
The woman in black prides herself with being a bully too, or so her maniacal quips suggest. Folklore has it that the woman in black took her own life upon knowledge of being impregnated by rape. She lurks the mansion in which she died, where Ella and her whole class are to make their school retreat—because of course, right? After a good half-hour of waltzing between hormonal and supernatural conflicts—Ella is torn between her crush Jacob (Jerome Ponce) and her childhood friend Adrian (Mortel) all while she’s being pursued by ghastly apparitions—things escalate to a bloody murder spree in which the woman in black rips tongues out of her victims.
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Side note: the woman in black probably didn’t enjoy eating those cheerleader tongues. “So you’re just trying to make me jeles pala eh,” the head-bully baby talks, look at that, meaning ‘jealous’ not ‘jeles’. Yep, she speaks English.
The logic of retreating to a haunted mansion is elusive. One teacher cares to enlighten us, pointing that the property is owned by a member of the school board, and that the school is skimping on expenses. That teacher is played by Janice De Belen, perhaps one of the greater commodities Filipino horror has. And yet her contribution to this story is unfairly very measly. Dominic Ochoa’s priest, on the other hand, serves the purpose of the film’s allusion of faith being a big betrayer. Religious idols populate Lana’s screen during the final confrontation at the chapel, most of the remaining characters die close to the feet of the saints.
This is shot beautifully by Carlo Mendoza, which comes as no surprise as his assured handiwork is showcased best in Lana’s previous films Barber’s Tales and Anino Sa Likod Ng Buwan. His visuals almost counterpoint the overbearing score, riddled with cheap drum hits and supposedly ominous beats.
The irony of Catholics betrayed by their faith makes for great material, if touched at all like in Mari Asato’s gorgeous Fatal Frame. In the film, students from a Catholic school disappear, afflicted by a curse that only affects young women. In the space of a hundred minutes, moral, sexual and spiritual turmoils collide, and the result is as chilly as it is melancholic. Where Asato’s film cages its characters within walls, Lana’s straight-up shuts the doors before them. You just wish the film digs the whole six feet, expounds on its themes of religion, and not squanders its great potential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oy3Pwb-Isg
