★★★½
“Not half bad.”
I should start by explaining the above tagline. The main monster here is the aswang, a female vampiric creature from Philippines folklore. Its main distinguishing feature, is that after passing for human during the day, at night it splits its body in two, and the top half then flies around, killing people and eating their entrails, using a super-long tongue. There is a secret group, tasked with keeping mankind both safe and unaware of these, as well as any other creatures that go bump in the night. One of its top agents is Mahal (Dennis), who has a particular interests in aswangs (aswangii?), since she blames them for the death of her father.
When word of one operating in San Francisco reaches her organization, she begs its head, Michele Kilman (Deleon) for the chance to track down and kill it. However, when Mahal locates Bampinay (Almario), the aswang in question, she’s in for a shock, and her entire worldview is turned upside down. Mahal learns the disturbing truth, both about her own heritage and the group for whom she operates. Maybe she isn’t working for the good guys, after all, and the aswang are just… misunderstood?
To be honest, the budget here is some way short of being capable of pulling off the level of effects necessary to do the ideas justice. This is particularly obvious in the aerial battles, which would be okay, if only this were a mid-priced Xbox game and not a feature film. However, the invention and energy present make it relatively easy to set aside the frequently ropey technical aspects, and embrace the well-considered world and its characters. To build things, Abaya adopts a slew of different styles from silhouettes to mockumentary. The latter is used for one of those monster shows, in which an American goes to the Philippines in search of the aswang (he perpetually mispronounces it as “ass wang” – it’s actually more like “ah-SWANG”), only for it to find him first…
The film is continually inventive like this, with another new facet appearing every few minutes, such as the hopping vampires, familiar from Hong Kong movies of the eighties (brief pause to pour one out for the late Lam Ching-Ying, the doyen of that genre!). It is possible you might get more out of it if you are familiar with the culture already, and there are plenty of digs at the West, in particular Western men. Bampinay has no trouble feeding entirely on sleazeballs and politicians who deserve to have their guts gobbled down by a flying half-woman. If you’re so inclined, there are some interesting subtexts about cultural identity and gender to unpack as well.
Yet it remains highly accessible, with characters who are universal and fun to be with. In particular, there’s Mahal, who is probably the closest thing to a female version of Blade I’ve seen, with buckets of attitude, and them some to spare. At one point she spits at a misogynistic colleague, “Why don’t you go find yourself a chupacabra to fuck?” This was likely the moment at which I let go of my doubts and climbed on board for the ride. Do the same, and you’ll have fun.
Dir: Matthew Abaya
Star: Kelly Lou Dennis, Aureen Almario, Arlene Joie Deleon, Roberto Divina.