Richard Somes’s Liwanag sa Dilim enacts a battle between good and evil, the timeless adventure of friends joined in defeating a villainous being, tykes assembled in lieu of the common task of slaying the monster under the bed. And although the film is elusive to the delineation as a children’s adventure, it is not too far from reading like a bedtime story, rested upon the conceit of simplistic, almost one-note virtues that are supposedly webbed within a simplistic narrative.
If my guess is right, then where the film falls sharp is with that last part. So much of it happens in mitigating the troubling situations in the otherwise simple provincial community of Sta. Estancia; some of it appropriate, if only for the reason that the principal characters in the film are mere adolescents–children who make the transition to early adulthood that for many can be horrific, as mirrored by an ambiguous predator lurking in the night-time forests. The hero for this story is a knucklehead from the city (Jake Vargas) who we learn, in an unsurprising turn of events, belongs to an uncertain group of guardians (or are they protectors? Is it not one and the same?) that is involved in a feud with the said evil creature. There is only scarce exposition (and to think this is an adventure film!): it does not give me much about the knucklehead’s clan, but I am advised that there is an uptight grand-master (Dante Rivero) and a sinister-looking woman (Sarah Labhati) who might or might not be hunting adolescents for game. Thus, I know that there is good, and there is evil.
It is not surprising that Von de Guzman makes a synth-laden assault with his score, explicitly referencing John Carpenter’s Halloween, which I guess is aligned to the good-vs-evil thematic the film is aspiring to. Whether Labhati’s character is in the service of a metaphor for the horrors of adolescence or a mere incarnation of evil, I am not certain, but there is a difference between creating an absence of character, in the same vein that Carpenter did with Michael Myers, and just plainly underwriting it.
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There is a discomfiting sense of uncertainty prevalent in the film that begins and ends with it not having a definite grasp on its identity. It persists on its horror undertones when it operates best as an adventure film. Somewhere in the middle, hormones and sexual urges are discussed, if only very slightly, and the creature howls, torn between the two reasons available to back her torment: to justify her metaphorical value; or to continue the age-old war she has with the clan of hunters of her kind.
I realize it is a daunting ride, having to sit through this unrealized mess—but not long after the ending credits roll out. I blame the film’s main visual linguist: Somes’s fluency with image anchors the weak script-work through a denouement that feels simultaneously tedious and, on a very curious degree, accomplished. The hero having fulfilled his mission, the heroine (Bea Binene) proving capable on her own, and the frightful (Igi Boy Flores) coming out of his shell. Ultimately, the conceit upon which Liwanag sa Dilim rests is as straightforward as there is good and evil, and that evil must be slain.
