The Spy in the Sandwich

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

12:09 AM | The Time Traveling Serial Killer

There is a point somewhere in the fuzzy third act of Mallari where a character named Agnes confronts one of the Piolos [there are four] in this movie, where she tells him: “I knew you before as a doctor. Now you’re telling me you’re a fortuneteller.” I felt her confusion so hard. Because this movie is exactly like that: it does not know what it wants to be.

Because what is this? A movie about a historical serial killer? A movie about a crusading documentarian during the American colonial period? A movie about a lovelorn doctor? A movie about aswangs or manananggals? A movie about American military propaganda against the Huks? A movie about rural beliefs? A movie about social justice? A movie about the servant class eating the rich [or at least the sinful]? A movie about proto-TikTokers? [See Felicity’s final filmed confession.]

A movie about ... time travel?

When the time travel element was introduced, that was when I finally decided to just suspend all my longing for this movie to make sense, and just surrender to the horrendous absurdity of it all.

Fact was, I was so ready to do that already the first instant Mallari wanted to underline its horror elements [mostly through cheap jump scares] by announcing them with screeching music that bludgeons the viewer to pay attention and be scared. [Screeching music. A ghost!] But it doesn’t help that they mostly announce ghouls who just stand there — and do absolutely nothing of consequence. The movie does this ad infinitum that by the time we reach the 999th jump scare, you’re just ... numb with boredom.

Which is sad, because the story of Fr. Severino Mallari — the 18th century Filipino priest who is marked in our history as the country’s first recorded serial killer — is already so rich with narrative possibilities. Just following that story, even if the filmmakers have to embellish it to make up for the lack of concrete historical data, would have sufficed. But screenwriter Enrico Santos, perhaps fearful that he didn't have enough material to constitute a screenplay, opted to fictionalize by making this a story about a curse transcending generations, threading it all with the very hoary device of ... time travel. That’s what you call a choice.

A lot of the narrative elements of the film was certainly a CHOICE: killing off Mylene Dizon in the first few moments was a choice [hello, Drew Barrymore in Scream!], and then bringing in her cowering boy to the last few minutes to round off this story with an arrest was a choice; a priest spouting off “woke knowingness” and then the film proceeding to demonstrate the “kill the gays” trope was a choice; having exactly three paintings of distant ancestors hanging in an old house as shorthand for character introductions was a choice [the other ancestors don’t matter to this family?]; Elisse Joson’s acting as a bitchy Felicity was a choice; the predictability of JC Santos’ character arc from the moment he encounters Didi was a choice; the lack of serial killing was a choice; the humanizing of the serial killer was a choice; demonizing St. Bartholomew [and then making a post-script to deny this] was a choice; Piolo’s bad wig and fake beard were a choice; having characters do mouthful expository dumps as dialogue at crucial moments of high drama [to explain away gnarly narratives] was a choice — but that one with Gloria Diaz explaining the existence of a time-traveling descendant with a knife to her throat was icing on the cake; the fact that there’s only one kind of moon — a full moon always bathed in red — was a choice.

I was so excited to watch this film, and purposefully made it the first MMFF entry I would watch for 2023. I left the theater wondering what could have been if the screenplay was better. Sayang.

Labels: philippine cinema