ZOMBADINGS 1: PATAYIN SA SHOKOT SI REMINGTON (Jade Castro)

-

My hesitation with ZOMBADINGS before, is that it can easily fall into the mainstream cliches that people have become tired of, like over-the-top performances and what-have-you. Make no mistake. I am not talking about Roderick Paulate. His piercing stare alone elicits shivers. As the gay who cursed the film's main character Remington (Martin Escudero) early in the story, Paulate is highly effective; his iconic status in Philippine cinema and comedic talent bring credibility to the character.

ZOMBADINGS 1 starts off fine enough. A young boy pokes fun at homosexuals he encounters, until one of them hexes him, turning him into a homosexual when he grows up.

Fast forward to present time; a spree of killings victimizing gays abound the town of Lucban, Quezon. Remington is all grown up and masculine now. His mother (Janice de Belen) is a police officer investigating the murders. His father (the comeback role of John Regala) mans the eatery. There goes your role reversal.

Then Remington gets attacked by a faceless brooding creature; gradually, he becomes gay, first with his gestures, then his language, then his sexual preference. 

Now he is torn between his best friend Jigs (Kerbie Zamora) and the girl next door Hannah (Lauren Young). 

If we can sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride, ZOMBADINGS proves to be worth the while. It sure has loads of humor and snappy one-liners (Morayta lang 'yan!) and Martin Escudero is a revelation. The guy can act gay effectively.

You'd feel the amount of love and collaboration Raymond Lee, Michiko Yamamoto and Jade Castro poured in the script. Though cliches are all over the film (just look at how the film ends) the events in the story actually make sense. Except maybe why Eugene Domingo likes the roller blades. But we love her for that anyway.

For me the funniest moment of the film is when Remington tries to identify the objects inside the bathroom, and he unwittingly refers to them in gayspeak, signifying his transformation. 

The gaydar is another winning element.

Under the surface, ZOMBADINGS really paints us a picture of the horrors of homophobia, and presents homosexuality as a part of our society that we must understand. The key lies in understanding. We fear what we don't understand, hence the killing spree.   

There are pitfalls in the movie too. If the gaydar detects gays in proximity, then how come it didn't detect ________ early on? (I avoided the spoiler here in case you haven't seen it yet).

Oh, and Marian Rivera's presence isn't really necessary. Mailes Kanapi as the dim-witted cop is overacting, but not her fault maybe. We don't really have characters like that in real life.

ZOMBADINGS knows what it wants and pursues it. It feels retro (with the 80s and 90s actors and all) and mainstream at the same time (the narrative suffers from convention) but is still otherwise funny. And yes, there's a moral lesson on the sidelines, so there goes your genre movie with all its pros and cons.

RATING: 3/5





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitalizing on ta
Read more

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn'
Read more

A study of spaces in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 'Happy Old Year'

-
Image
Space is both an overarching theme and visual signifier in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Happy Old Year . Its protagonist, Jean (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) comes home from a lengthy stay abroad, determined to declutter her life, and along with it, old things that belong to a past she is desperately running away from. As we watch Jean plan the redesign of their family house into a more spacious and minimalist residential office, we also witness the transformation of the persons that inhabit the house, as well as their connection to other people, most of them absent from the frame. Jean the destroyer Millennials have often been criticized for being rash with their actions, and for having their way, no matter what. The filmmaker, a millennial himself, understands this stigma, and subliminally argues that millennials are the way they are because of a multitude of factors: rising cost of living, the evolution of discourse as a result of technology (such as film streaming se
Read more