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“P77,” GMA Pictures’ summer offering, may understandably become a polarizing film. Released through GMA Public Affairs’ film division, one would expect the movie to carry some concern over the social responsibility of the media, and, like their 2024 offering, “Green Bones,” would loop back to some didactic end. Initially slated for a 2023 release, its early promotional materials said that it was a film about the horrors of homelessness in a city of ghettos and skyscrapers. The final result shifted towards something else.

Barbie Forteza plays Luna, a daughter in a family facing precarity, who signed up to work on a cruise ship. Her employment was cut short as she rushed back home after learning of a medical emergency involving her sickly younger brother, Jonas (Euwenn Mikaell). With her mother missing in action, Luna takes matters into her own hands to work again for her family. She then finds out about Penthouse 77,...

“Mallari” attempts for a certain kind of innovation with a narrative structure freshly lifted off anime-like, parallel-world, time-travel story telling. Leveraging in the fantastic, three generations of stories overlap one another convincingly to tell a ghost story that haunts the titular family for decades. But all of these attempts at novelty to reimagine the lore of a historically documented serial killer from the colonial Philippines? The film seems to be capturing through its creativity an attitude as old as its narrative itself.

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The marvel of Mallari’s technical achievements cannot be ignored. Derrick Cabrido’s years of handling horror films is matched by Enrico Santos‘ veteran penmanship and Pao Orendain‘s textured images that shape the scenes with enough darkness to fill the scares. Santos’ script in particular exhibits a really good pulse in pacing sequences. Their attempt to...

Directed by Roderick Cabrido, the Filipino horror film Mallari stars Piolo Pascual as the three main characters living in different time periods: Juan Severino Mallari, Johnrey, and Jonathan. The film is centered around the Mallari family from Magalang, Pampanga. In 2023, Jonathan, a doctor, returned to his ancestral property in Magalang to find the cure for his wife’s illness, and that was when the supernatural phenomena began. The film is inspired by the real-life story of Father Juan Severino Mallari of Magalang, Pampanga, infamous for killing 57 people. Mallari adds a supernatural element to the story and takes it up a notch. From astral projection to time travel, the film offers an elaborate explanation to connect the three timelines.

Spoiler Alert

Why did Father Severino turn into a killer?

In 1812, during the Spanish colonial era, Father Juan Severino Mallari moved to Magalang to spread the word of Christ. Soon his mother,...