I once lived in a beat up old apartment building in the north end of Toronto. On my very first night in the apartment, as I lay in bed with the windows wide open to combat the summer heat, there was a violent - and I mean violent - domestic assault somewhere in the building. Both man and woman were screaming at the top of their lungs, punches could be heard landing, and at one point one threatened to get a knife from the kitchen and put it to new use on the other. It was not what you'd call a pleasant introduction to a new home.
Director Yam Laranas understands the disorientation and unease that comes with a new home, particularly a home in which you're packed side by side with people you do not know or have any connection with. Every sound becomes amplified and no dirty little secrets are ever truly private. The Filipino director mines this urban discomfort to great effect in his gorgeously photographed horror film Sigaw (The Echo).
Sigaw revolves around Marvin, a young man in Manila who has just purchased a condo in a broken down old building. The building has clearly seen better days but Marvin is proud of his independence, proud even to the point of refusing to allow his girlfriend Pinky to move in with him for fear that shared living would mean less freedom.
The solo living experience begins to sour quickly, however, as every night Marvin is kept awake by the violent arguments between his neighbors down the hall. Anna is married to Bert, a violent a pathologically jealous policeman who takes out all of his insecurities on Anna and their young daughter Lara with his fists night after night. Things are getting worse by the day and Anna, fearing for the life of her daughter, is desperately looking for anyone who can help her out of her situation ...
Sigaw deftly intercuts the stories of Marvin and Anna with some seriously creepy supernatural elements and while it won't take genre fans long to figure out what's going on the film is still a huge success based on it's deft execution. Laranas paces things beautifully and fully appreciates that less is often more so when the jumps come they hit home hard. The film loses its way a bit in the third act when the action briefly leaves the confines of Marvin's building but Laranas brings it all back home by the end.
While most of the characters never progress too far beyond standard genre types they are all decently performed, with Anna's stellar performance as an abused wife giving the film some true heft. If you didn't by the reality of Anna's plight this film would fall apart entirely but she nails it with by far the richest, deepest, most compelling performance of the lot.
A large portion of the film's success is due, no doubt, to Laranas' brilliant choice of setting. The apartment block itself looms as large as any of the human characters with it's faded grandeur and slow decline into decay and rot. This was clearly a high class building at one point that has been allowed to slide into just slightly better than slum status and it provides Laranas with countless beautiful shots and interesting angles. The opening shot of the spiral staircase is particularly strong. Bolstering the physical setting is the fantastically stylized and color filtered cinematography. In many ways the lighting work evokes that of Christopher Doyle only much darker, and the film benefits accordingly. The sound design is similarly strong and integral to the film as a whole.
That fantastic lighting unfortunately doesn't get the best treatment on the Filipino DVD release. While the disc does include solid English subtitles and even English packaging - clearly they are targeting the export market - the transfer is non-anamorphic letterboxed and plagued by a peculiar strobe effect with the brightness constantly flickering. The resolution is a little bit soft and there are some obvious digital artifacts as well.
Does Sigaw bring anything new to the horror - specifically the Asian horror - genre? No, not particularly. But it does what it does exceptionally well. Much like largely overlooked Thai film Shutter before it this is an intelligent film with some serious subtext that showcases some serious technical skills. Had this come early in the Asian horror boom rather than late we could easily be talking about Sigaw in the same breath as Ringu and The Eye.