It’s MMFF season again and as with every year, I find myself absolutely dumbfounded by the calamity that is local mainstream cinema. I know, I know, it’s a terrible attitude to have and believe me, I keep waiting for that one golden moment when some visionary Filipino filmmaker will actually come up with a movie that is both popular with the masses (i.e., MMFF-material) and yet isn’t riddled with cliches, stereotypes and outright rip-offs. I’m still waiting.
By way of example, let’s take Jose Javier Reyes’ Matakot Ka Sa Karma, one of the two big horror entries this year. This trio of vignettes centers around an antique shop and 3 pieces of cursed furniture that have found their way to our three female leads. The first vignette stars Gretchen Barretto’s lips (or Jolips, as I’ve taken to calling them) as a mother who buys a carved wooden bed frame from the shop at a huge discount. Shortly after the bed is delivered, an annoying ghost begins appearing at doorways, walking across mirrors or staring glumly outside windows, mostly when the main characters’ backs are turned. The cinematography and blocking is so predictable that, during one of the countless look-behind-you sequences, one audience member actually screamed before the ghost moved across the frame.
Apparently, the bed belonged to some lady whose son was stillborn, and thus has decided to take Barretto’s son as her own. The ghost’s plan is simple: she’ll lure Barretto to the bedroom, lock her in, and make off with her son. Guess what? It works.
The second vignette involves a rich couple — Rica Peralejo and Derek Ramsey — who are given a heavy wooden cabinet for use in their "den room" (sic). Rica and Derek are always squabbling. In fact, their entire household, including the two maids, do nothing but bicker all day long, even about simple things like buying soy sauce from the clubhouse.
When the cabinet is delivered, they have yet another reason to argue, particularly when Rica decides to use it to store Derek’s magazine collection. The cabinet won’t have it of course, and proceeds to throw the magazines back out each night. Clearly, no one — not even a half-sentient wooden box — believes that Derek Ramsey can actually read.
The big punchline involves some ugly-looking hunchback dude who was apparently locked inside the cabinet and left to die. Somehow, this wooden box is air-tight, and there’s actually a flashback sequence where we watch him slowly suffocating. The hunchback’s ghost doesn’t like being in the cabinet alone so he pulls people through whenever they come close. Once he grabs Rica, Reyes decides that there is nothing left to say, and moves on to the last story.
The third act in this comedy of errors stars Angelica Panganiban and Bianca King, two graphics artists that work in a printing press. Every day they come to work dressed like fashion magazine editors, never noticing that their workplace is actually a high-ceiling warehouse with big ventilation shafts and kilowatt lighting. Angelica bends and sits and crosses her legs, and baby-fat threatens to burst through her clothes and smother everyone on the set.
Our girl is the recipient of a three-mirror dresser which Bianca — God love her — theorizes is worth at least PhP20,000. The dresser also happens to contain an interesting necklace. It looks like it was bought at a tiangge for 200 bucks, but again, the two friends decide that it must be a valuable antique. Bianca takes it with her and is never heard from again. The next day, the necklace is somehow back in the drawer, and Angelica rather impulsively decides that she no longer wants anything to do with the dresser.
Of course, the necklace wants everything to do with her, as The Devil himself actually appears to make sure she wears it. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, we were in hysterics.
Now, given that the movie only barely made any sense, the only question on my mind after leaving the theater (and indeed, as I write this review) was, "What exactly did any of those stories have to do with karma?"