Ang babaeng putik

I recently watched the Filipino film 🇵🇭 Woman of Mud (2000) on Shudder. The storyline follows a horror author in search of inspiration for his next novel. He may have found it in the form of a mysterious goddess who begins haunting his dreams. But when those dreams start bleeding into reality, his luck may run out before he finishes his manuscript.

Directed by Rico Maria Ilarde (Z-Man), the film stars Carlos Morales (Ronda), Marcus Madrigal (The Vigil), John Arcilla (The Bourne Legacy), and Olga Natividad (The Sleep).

This is one of those horror films where no amount of genre knowledge would've saved me-the woman would've killed me for sure. The plot is unique and told in its own quirky way, though I'll admit the early jungle segments gave off strong "bad '80s Chuck Norris movie" vibes.

The costumes, makeup, and set design are creatively done, with an almost surreal, artistic edge. The cast delivers solid performances, and the women-absolutely stunning. There's also a fair amount of nudity throughout. The blood-sucking scenes were well-executed, especially the first gory encounter, which was fantastic. She definitely could've drained me dry, and I probably wouldn't have even noticed. And then-suddenly-the Predator shows up... and I have no idea how or why, but there it was. My mind was blown.

In conclusion, Woman of Mud is a bit all over the place, but if you're in the mood for something strange, unpredictable, and unique, this might be worth a watch. I'd score it a 5/10 and only recommend it to die-hard horror fans.

A pre-med student, Mark, decides to throw it all away to try his hand at writing horror fiction. For inspiration, he moves to a remote hamlet ruled by self-styled mercenary police and befriends a few locals somehow living among the isolated tropics of rural Philippines. Unfortunately, as soon as he arrives he develops writer's block. A hokey faux magician entrusts Mark with cultivating a strange "living tree" (he pawns it off as "Japanese squash") that begets a strange, mute woman who inexplicably becomes Mark's lover. She doesn't eat or drink but when Mark accidentally cuts his hand, she is quick to suck his blood. While all of the nude sex scenes with her give Mark newfound inspiration to write, the downside is that she occasionally turns into a grotesque flesh-eating monster. This is a mild horror opus that suffers from a plodding pace until the monster shows up late in the game, and then it becomes all too predictable. Mark, indifferently played by Carlos Morales, is too dense a character to be likable (or even believable). The supporting cast, including Joanne Miller as a local girl who befriends Mark and John Arcilla as the leader of the police-soldiers, fare much better. As the woman of mud, Klaudia Koronel has little to do other than look beautiful. A big negative is the paper mâché monster costume.

Trying to start his writing career, a student rents out a small shack in the wilderness in order to write his newest story only to come under the seductive spell of a beautiful woman that needs the blood of others to survive and tries to save his friends from the deadly being.

For the most part, this one wasn't too bad. What really really for the film is the intriguing and enjoyable storyline here involving the appearance of the fictional creature. This is a common enough storyline that has appeared numerous other times involving a figure unwittingly summoning something malicious to destroy him through a ceremonial setup. While utilizing that storyline, this generates the kind of old-school morality scares that's usually associated with someone slowly being overwhelmed by the oncoming horror of the newcomer in his life. As he slowly comes around to the idea of who he's really hanging out with, that drives the film's strong horror scenes of the creature taking out his friends and others around him. From the seductions of the different friends to the transformation sequence in the woods to showing it killing the curious local by the waterfall, this has some incredibly strong sequences. Included in that is the fantastic finale where it includes the battle in the house with the demonic creature and a final battle in the woods which has some great action that picks this up nicely. Combined with the demonic creatures' makeup and a nice amount of gore, these hold it up over the few minor flaws. Among the film's biggest flaws is a wholly disjointed and chaotic storyline that has way too many ideas in place. The opening here goes on way too long with just getting him to the central shack which could've been accomplished rather economically, and then comes the idea of how he suffers from writers' block which really consists of him around the cabin fixing up broken parts or sitting around staring at nothing. Coupled with a romance of the neighbors' daughter and the utterly unneeded storyline about the rebel soldiers hanging around, these issues simply cause the film to run on far longer than necessary and hold it back from what it could've been. There's no reason for this one to even introduce the fictional woman until the forty-five minute mark, and to then go until nearly the hour point for her to even get birthed as the plot brings these features out far later in the running time. Aside from the pacing, the other really troubling issue is the low-budget look of the movie. While this maintains a naturalistic look with its remote woodland village where it's set, the fact remains that this one is still not blessed with all that much of a budget. Many of the in-camera tricks, from the mirror gags and the different hunting scenes where they're out in the forest looking on over the shack, are all rather obviously done on the cheap in a real location. The small-cast also doesn't help much since we don't get all that many people involved which furthers the whole low-budget feel. However, it's all set up by the actual monster costume which looks really weak and distracting the more it's on-screen which is thankfully kept to a few brief snippets yet doesn't diminish the fact that it looks quite hokey. These issues here keep the film down.

Rated Unrated/R: Continuous Nudity, Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and several sex scenes.