Hollywoodization By Rina Jimenez-David
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: August 23, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines is about to get a taste of “Hollywoodization,” with the pending release of “The Echo,” the Hollywood remake of Yam Laranas’ film “Sigaw,” which Laranas himself is directing.
Though it’s been exhibited in film festivals, “The Echo” has yet to find a release date on the American commercial circuit, although the buzz so far has been positive. On-line critics have given it positive reviews, with one saying the movie “manages to be both artistic and terrifying,” while Dread Central.com remarks that it’s “a very solid movie and hopefully only the beginning of what Mr. Laranas has to show us.”
“The Echo” is produced and distributed by Vertigo Entertainment, an outfit that spearheaded a growing trend of remaking or adapting Asian movies for an American and worldwide audience. Most of these movies were part of the so-called “Asian horror” trend, with films like “Ring” and “The Grudge” finding new life in “Hollywoodized” versions. For the most part, audiences have found the Asian originals more frightening, even if bigger money and better technology have allowed for the use of more special effects and better lighting, not to mention better-known actors. I’ve surmised that this may be because the Asian originals are rooted in the culture, where people accept the parallel world of the supernatural and paranormal. Uprooted from this sense of living with the unseen and ephemeral, the films become just a collection of creepy moments that telegraph their intent.
I don’t know how Laranas, who made “The Echo” in Toronto, fared under the pressure to make a movie attuned to Western sensibilities. The movie’s success with critics so far must be due to the material, which is a tightly focused telling of one man’s frightening encounter with the supernatural, with little reference to the prevailing environment. Shadows, sounds, silence and fright are easy enough to translate cinematically.
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I FIRST caught Laranas’ work in “Radyo” and I must confess I wasn’t impressed. I found the film all style with little substance, and as the killings progressed and the corpses started piling up—with little logic or provocation—it even turned the corner into the absurd.
Which is why I refused to watch “Sigaw” when it was first released as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival. I caught it only in its TV version, but even in the small screen “Sigaw” managed to create the right atmosphere, the setting, a crumbling building in downtown Manila, contributing much to the sense of unreality and unrelenting gloom.
How will “The Echo” fare among an audience that has already seen “Sigaw”? And how has Laranas managed to transplant his ghost story into a different culture, attuned to a different sensibility?
Actually, I’m quite skeptical of how “The Echo” will turn out, although it has the invaluable advantage of having the director of the original version at the helm.
This opinion is based on viewings of other transplanted films, whose originals I had also seen. For the most part, a lot of the flavor is lost in translation, with touches of humor falling flat, and sentiment, either unbecomingly blown-up or muted, rendered mundane.
