REVIEW | Horrors! ‘Sapi’ is an astonishingly bad movie

Dennis Trillo and Meryll Soriano in a scene from 'Sapi'.

Arthouse independent filmmaker Brillante Mendoza leaps into the horror genre and brings us “Sapi” (Possession), starring “My Husband’s Lover’s” Dennis Trillo, as well as Meryll Soriano and Baron Geisler.

The “horror” genre, in its simplest meaning, aims to scare the daylights out of the moviegoers. But considering “Sapi” is a Brillante Ma. Mendoza film, expect a layer of social issues. And a dose of artsy fartsy.

“Sapi” only qualifies as a horror movie because it should scare both indie and mainstream moviegoers. There is not a single scary moment. Instead, “Sapi” is one astonishingly confused, sloppy, senseless and boring movie.

Rival TV networks PBC and SBN, during habagat times, both cover a possession story. In a country where sapi cases trend like selfies, the two netwoks compete for only one sapi case: The Ruby Case.

SBN’s Meryll (Soriano) and Dennis (Trillo) fail to produce a ratings-grabbing footage of the actual possession of Ruby, so Meryll buys footage from PBC’s cameraman Baron (Geisler). It’s a best buy; a masterpiece of a footage: Ruby captured trashing about and screaming “Diablo!” So what are the odds of getting caught? One hundred percent. Since it’s the exact same footage Baron submitted to his own network.

Their idiotic and illegal copyright infringement act—and breach of victim privacy—surprisingly do not result in job termination, but presumably earns the wrath of the devil. Or maybe not.

So, anyway, random paranormal activities start happening to the greedy and exploitative media people. And this is where Mendoza incorporates his horror symbols: phantom fellatio sessions, snake coming out of the vagina, and some funny looking naked entities inside the furniture. Since there is no pattern to the paranormal activities, so random and oddly out of place, there is zero sense of dread, anticipation, and fear.

What about the supposed social issues? Well, the glaring issue here, the bigger problem with these media people in the movie, is not their unethical ways, but their serious lack of personality and emotion.

After the characters experience these weird, unexplained “horrors,” none of them seem bothered by them—or even curious as to why disturbing stuff are happening to them.

I mean, if an incubus raped me last night and I gave a bloody birth to a huge snake, I don’t think I would be able to speak for the rest of my life. But Meryll just goes on with her daily business, fresh and unperturbed, and the barely speaking Dennis continues to look lost and clueless.

And throughout the film, there’s this disembodied parseltongue whispering to the blank-faced characters, that you’d wonder whether it’s the film’s soundtrack, or hearing demonic whispering is a normal part of their daily lives.

The movie is filtered to a colorless scheme, like the plot itself, with flashes of a fake stormy sky, which all the more takes away the rawness and the realism the movie is aiming for.

I am a huge fan of Brillante Mendoza, but what possessed him and his writers (all five of them) to create this catastrophe? It’s as if Mendoza was possessed by the mainstream devil, and in the process of self-exorcism, has produced this movie.

(This review is cross-published in the author’s blog.)

REVIEW | Horrors! ‘Sapi’ is an astonishingly bad movie

Source: InterAksyon.com (November 07, 2013 at 05:58PM)

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