REVIEW: Pagpag

Pagpag disappoints. It had good ideas, but most of them get squandered to make way for a love story that feels half-baked.

This love story is Pagpag's most visible fault. It is the movie's greatest hurdle, the one that stops the movie from achieving consistent plotting, real scares, or logical character development.

This is a shame because I felt that the movie had good ideas that felt fun on paper. A group of young kids go to a wake and violate several superstitions without their knowledge. So the spirit of the dead gets angry and hunts them down one by one, and they die according to the superstition that they violated.

This idea recalls the smash hit Feng Shui back from 2004, the landmark Filipino horror film that ushered in the new style of Philippine horror flicks.

In Feng Shui, the characters were dying according to their Chinese horoscope. It was fun to guess how the characters will die, and the filmmakers fulfilled that excitement. One character died from leptospirosis, while one died after being hit by a Rabbit bus. One died after she fell to her death onto broken bottles of Red Horse, which, frankly, was less fun than the guess my siblings and I made: kinabayo by the rapist chasing her.

Once I learnt what was happening in Pagpag, I eased up from my critical chair and prepared to have fun. I am a big fan of crazy-cheesy horror films, after all.

Like this one. Watch it now.

Unfortunately, Pagpag's fun moments are killed whenever the movie stops to show the love story. I don't understand how the characters of Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo can fall in love with each other in such short time, and while their friends are dying around them. Isn't that the height of insensitivity?

The two does not also look devastated after most of the people they know have been killed. This may just be bad characterization, or the two actors just don't know how to act out desperation and pathos yet.

It is also illogical how the ghost is sparing the lives of the two. Near the end, the ghost only picks Kathryn up by her hair and does not kill her. In fact, he floats around stupidly with the girl so Daniel can come for rescue.

This isn't the only plot hole. More: why was Matet de Leon's character killed when she did not violate any superstition? Why would the ghost be resurrected when the number of deaths aren't yet complete? There was also this guy who died naked, and his ghost later showed up with shorts on.

Lesson: ghosts are modest.

There's also this thread where we are shown that the guy has a bleeding wound on his chest. I was waiting for a twist, but it never came. If it is a red herring, then it's the least graceful red herring there is.

I can only assume that Pagpag would be a horror classic if it wasn't made to be an MMFF vehicle for the Kapamilya loveteam.