THE ROAD Review
The
first of the three episodes of Yam Laranas' The
Road is the most reminiscent of the atmospheric thrills of Sigaw (The Echo, 2004). One night in 2008, three teenagers (Barbie
Forteza, Lexi Fernandez and Derrick Monasterio) find an abandoned dirt road to
practice driving. As they move further from the junction, a suspicious red car
passes by them every so often. After noticing that the red car is without a
driver, they hurriedly find their way back to the junction, but to no avail.
They are trapped, and continuously haunted by the mysterious red car and a
woman whose bloodied head is covered by a plastic bag.
The
episode, set mostly at night in an abandoned road lighted only by the moon and headlights
of occasional cars, relies on mood, on the presumed danger of being alone
amidst omens and apparitions, to work and Laranas, a horror stylist here more
than anything, creates an atmosphere of quiet but certain hostility.
The
second and third episodes, set ten years prior to each other, forgo of the
phantasmagoric for the more visceral. Physical and psychological torments, as
opposed to the supernatural one of the first episode, are in the forefront. In
1998, two sisters (Rhiann Ramos and Louise de los Reyes) find themselves
prisoners in the house of a disturbed man (Alden Richards). In 1988, a boy (Renz
Valerio) is brought up by his domineering mother (Carmina Villaroel) and his
religiously zealous father (Marvin Agustin).
From
the grim greys of the abandoned road, Laranas expands his palette, creating a
canvas of lush and inviting colors that only downplay the depravities that are
depicted. Tying the three episodes together is the informally accepted mission
of a recently promoted cop (TJ Trinidad) to investigate the case of the missing
sisters from 1998.
Where
in Sigaw, the violent deaths of a
mother and child in the hands of an overly jealous cop has transformed their
apartment building into a time-trapped capsule where the tortures and the
assaults are repeated forever, in The Road,
the abandoned road meets the same fate, time-trapped by victims of abject
cruelty. Laranas' ghosts are not troubled spirits thirsting for revenge. They
are imprints of a violent past, perpetual footmarks in a place vandalized by
vile intentions.
Laranas'
ambitious mapping of the place's history of brutality inevitably leads to
loopholes in the story's logic and perhaps in the logic of the characters
involved. Questions arise and most of them are left carelessly unanswered. However,
there is more to the film than its flimsily crafted narrative web. In the scope
of what Laranas attempts to achieve, he more or less delivers a story that
notwithstanding the multitude of its lapses, coheres with a laudable vision of violence
that by its very nature and the extent of its corruption, disrespects the laws
of both place and time.
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention.)