Faith healing is one of the rather interesting parts of the Filipino culture. When someone who is ill, reaches his breaking point: desperation, when the doctors could no longer be his salvation, a Filipino will turn to a faith healer. 'The Healing', a movie about faith healing and curses and doppelgangers, is a major improvement to the Philippine horror genre. It delivers better camerawork and frees itself from censorship. A quasi-appropriate rating of R-13 will grab your attention when you enter the theaters. There are issues in this movie that you can't just ignore: the movie is stuck in the Chito S. Roño convention (something goes horribly wrong, the heroine finds people dying one by one and she figures the pattern, she tries to stop it, then poof! A big twist in the end will haunt you as the ending credits roll. You see following such convention will normally work for a time but will eventually be tired and unusable.
Nonetheless, 'The Healing' is a well-built suspenseful and fidgeting hour of scare, madness and faith healing-gone wrong. It's one of the movies that are downright conventional, so the tendency is to become predictable, but surprisingly, unusually, it works well.
Seth (Vilma Santos) is your friendly neighbor-although very successful in her white collar job. She is with a group of commoners in the neighborhood, one is her boarder, Alma (Pokwang); another is the resident police officer, Ding (Chris Villanueva); a mother (Janice De Belen) to a blind kid (Abby Bautista); Ruben and Greta (Allan Paule and Ynez Veneracion), husband and wife; and a disabled of speech Chona (Ces Quesada) and her husband Rex (Simon Ibarra). After recovering from a stroke, upon visiting one of Manang Elsa's (Daria Ramirez) healing sessions, Seth's friends became eager to go straight right to the faith healer. She is instant with deciding this matter, as five of her friends are in dire health condition. Some of them doesn't even see the tip of the iceberg anymore: one has breast cancer, one child has blindness and the other has goiter. The rest two are currently struggling through a skin disease.
As a result, they went to Manang Elsa's so that in there, they will be healed. Manang Elsa's brother, Melchor (Joel Torre) tells them that her brother cannot heal them as she is extremely ill. Seth was insistent, whose group came all the way from Manila, so Manang Elsa entertained her request. Patients were healed eventually, including Cookie (Kim Chiu) who is Seth's husband's daughter to another woman. Days will pass and they will brutally die one by one. What initially was an attempt to help her friends to acquire hopeful new beginnings has become their sudden ends. Seth, determined to find and ultimately put a stop to this mayhem, will take measures that will test her. Really will test her.
Like when protagonist are suddenly grotesquely killed, there has to be some real conventions this movie is strictly following. But I might repeat myself, I won't start talking about it again. Chito S. Roño has this nail-biting formula to the Filipino masses and sometimes I just opt dismiss the fact that it is tiring already even though it really is, needless to say. 'The Healing' should not work, but it does. It doesn't have moments of shocks, ones that are genuinely scary, but it has sustained sequences of suspense. See, there is a fine line between scary and creepy, but I won't bother myself explaining them no more. Clearly, Roño borrows many techniques from many superior overseas horror filmmakers and I really like this effort. What I also enjoyed, is the movie being eager to show us real gore. Just about time.
Philippine Star For All Seasons: Vilma Santos plays good in this movie. I'd really hate myself saying this but I think Kris Aquino really knows how to get scared; on the contrary, Vilma Santos REALLY knows how to act than compared with Aquino. Kim Chiu had very small moments in the movie. It only took Chiu little time to sparkle among the cast. Martin Del Rosario playing Jed, Seth's son, is really good and I like the fact that he has made it to this movie. The movie had textured characters that translated to believability to the whole performance. The interaction between Seth and all the characters were juicy yet raw, she is Star For All Seasons, after all. Spoiler alert: there is one particular scene in which you'll witness an almost-parody of a Hannibal Lecter x Claire encounter (you'll get this joke when you see the movie). Speaking of jokes, I felt joked and ridiculed with the movie's color schemes. My initial thought, even, was it was to promote a popular powdered milk brand.
Obviously, 'The Healing' had some issues. Some that I think we all have nothing to do about anyway. Regardless of these, 'The Healing' still builds tension and suspense to wander around the theater seats, as if persuading you to involuntarily fidget your fingertips for some moment.
GRADE: B
Nonetheless, 'The Healing' is a well-built suspenseful and fidgeting hour of scare, madness and faith healing-gone wrong. It's one of the movies that are downright conventional, so the tendency is to become predictable, but surprisingly, unusually, it works well.
Seth (Vilma Santos) is your friendly neighbor-although very successful in her white collar job. She is with a group of commoners in the neighborhood, one is her boarder, Alma (Pokwang); another is the resident police officer, Ding (Chris Villanueva); a mother (Janice De Belen) to a blind kid (Abby Bautista); Ruben and Greta (Allan Paule and Ynez Veneracion), husband and wife; and a disabled of speech Chona (Ces Quesada) and her husband Rex (Simon Ibarra). After recovering from a stroke, upon visiting one of Manang Elsa's (Daria Ramirez) healing sessions, Seth's friends became eager to go straight right to the faith healer. She is instant with deciding this matter, as five of her friends are in dire health condition. Some of them doesn't even see the tip of the iceberg anymore: one has breast cancer, one child has blindness and the other has goiter. The rest two are currently struggling through a skin disease.
As a result, they went to Manang Elsa's so that in there, they will be healed. Manang Elsa's brother, Melchor (Joel Torre) tells them that her brother cannot heal them as she is extremely ill. Seth was insistent, whose group came all the way from Manila, so Manang Elsa entertained her request. Patients were healed eventually, including Cookie (Kim Chiu) who is Seth's husband's daughter to another woman. Days will pass and they will brutally die one by one. What initially was an attempt to help her friends to acquire hopeful new beginnings has become their sudden ends. Seth, determined to find and ultimately put a stop to this mayhem, will take measures that will test her. Really will test her.
Like when protagonist are suddenly grotesquely killed, there has to be some real conventions this movie is strictly following. But I might repeat myself, I won't start talking about it again. Chito S. Roño has this nail-biting formula to the Filipino masses and sometimes I just opt dismiss the fact that it is tiring already even though it really is, needless to say. 'The Healing' should not work, but it does. It doesn't have moments of shocks, ones that are genuinely scary, but it has sustained sequences of suspense. See, there is a fine line between scary and creepy, but I won't bother myself explaining them no more. Clearly, Roño borrows many techniques from many superior overseas horror filmmakers and I really like this effort. What I also enjoyed, is the movie being eager to show us real gore. Just about time.
Philippine Star For All Seasons: Vilma Santos plays good in this movie. I'd really hate myself saying this but I think Kris Aquino really knows how to get scared; on the contrary, Vilma Santos REALLY knows how to act than compared with Aquino. Kim Chiu had very small moments in the movie. It only took Chiu little time to sparkle among the cast. Martin Del Rosario playing Jed, Seth's son, is really good and I like the fact that he has made it to this movie. The movie had textured characters that translated to believability to the whole performance. The interaction between Seth and all the characters were juicy yet raw, she is Star For All Seasons, after all. Spoiler alert: there is one particular scene in which you'll witness an almost-parody of a Hannibal Lecter x Claire encounter (you'll get this joke when you see the movie). Speaking of jokes, I felt joked and ridiculed with the movie's color schemes. My initial thought, even, was it was to promote a popular powdered milk brand.
Obviously, 'The Healing' had some issues. Some that I think we all have nothing to do about anyway. Regardless of these, 'The Healing' still builds tension and suspense to wander around the theater seats, as if persuading you to involuntarily fidget your fingertips for some moment.
GRADE: B
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