MOVIE REVIEW Shake, Rattle and Roll 13
Directed by Chris Martinez,
Richard Somes and Jerrold Tarog
Regal Films
PRODUCERS SHOULD have pulled the plug on the Shake, Rattle & Roll franchise a long time ago. They should have done that after 1997 and before 2005 when the studio realized that they could serve this tired sample of paranormal spectacle on a yearly basis.
The real horror of Shake, Rattle & Roll is the fact that it took this long to die. This series is like a zombie. The directors, writers, actors, and all those other people responsible for shooting this monstrosity keep missing the head. This year, the end of the production feels like this creature isn’t getting up only because they kept going for the belly for too long but with no headshot to show for.
Shake, Rattle & Roll’s 13th and reportedly last serving is another testament of the local mainstream cinema’s mindless desire to infect Filipino audiences with its vapid sensibilities in filmmaking and storytelling. Seriously, no one in Regal Films thought about exerting the slightest artistic effort into drawing up a theme for the three different narratives?
The anthropology of horror
Among the three stories of the current installment, two -- namely, “Tamawo” and “Rain, Rain, Go Away” -- were morality tales, while the remaining story “Parola” was just about an unfortunate possession.
“Rain, Rain, Go Away” and “Parola” were in urban settings, while “Tamawo” was set in rural Philippines.
Scare narratives have been traditionally didactic. Fear and horror are used as means of teaching people about sin and virtue, and that no one can get away with doing bad deeds. Eventually, cosmic forces will conspire to equalize the moral balance of the universe. In “Tamawo,” the basic lesson is “Respect mother nature,” in “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” it’s something along the lines of “Protect workers’ rights.”
Didactic horror stories are now rare in pop culture and the function of paranormal hauntings and supernatural beings go beyond good and evil. The TV show American Horror Stories, for instance, is a hodge podge of literary cliches and stereotypes about ghosts, but they merely haunt the living because they’re bored, miserable, and vengeful. It’s not because you’re a bad person; you just had the misfortune of moving into the “murder house,” because you can’t afford a modest, less historic home that wasn’t previously inhabited by psychos.
“Parola,” in a way, is superior to “Tamawo” and “Rain, Rain, Go Away” because it’s not a morality tale. Local cinema should lead the way in helping Filipinos let go of their reliance on cosmic forces to exact justice. In reality, how many times have we seen individuals and corporations get punished by the powers because of environmental exploitation, child labor, and murder?
Morality tales that resort to the unreal, mythical, fictitious or unproven are like opiate for the masses. Such horror stories can feed this moral complacency because, perhaps, the demographic of Shake, Rattle & Roll has given up on the fairness and effectiveness of human justice.
“Tamawo,” which is Hiligaynon for “inhabitants” -- is a metaphor for human ecological avarice. We take from nature and expect not to pay for what we’ve harvested. But thanks to the Tamawo, the human father (played by Zanjoe Marudo) is murdered for stealing and also killing the supernatural tribe’s baby. Even the innocents pay for the father’s wrongdoing as the family’s son (Bugoy Cariño) agrees to abandon his blind mother (Maricar Reyes) to live with the ridiculously blond and pasty fanged savages as payment for the dead child.
Since it’s about mother earth anyway, a cosmic morality tale is somewhat acceptable because environmental destruction does lead to climate change and global warming, landslides, flashfloods, pest infestation, and famine, to name a few. Although illegal loggers and irresponsible miners are hardly visited by the nuno sa Punso (dwarfs) for doing what they do.
On the other hand, “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” a story about typhoon Ondoy victims, is an embodiment of cheap didactic fiction.
No one should reserve any sympathy for people who employ children for manual labor and lock them up at night in the warehouse. More so if these people let the children drown during the Marikina flash flood because they totally forgot to unlock their sleeping quarters. The husband (Jay Manalo) and wife (Eugene Domingo) deserved every bit of the haunting and the dead workers were certainly justified in also drowning them.
Now if only events like that truly happened in this world, big American fashion houses would have shut down a long time ago.
The real horror of Shake, Rattle & Roll is the fact that it took this long to die. This series is like a zombie. The directors, writers, actors, and all those other people responsible for shooting this monstrosity keep missing the head. This year, the end of the production feels like this creature isn’t getting up only because they kept going for the belly for too long but with no headshot to show for.
