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Pamahiin |
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Noah has
just returned from America along with his
girlfriend, Eileen, to pay respect to his childhood
friend, Damian, who recently committed suicide. They
quickly realize that the small village Noah grew up
in has been swallowed by various superstitions. What
they could never imagine was that the superstitions
were real. They soon find themselves among evil
spirits who seem to want to hurt them. But why?
The Philippines aren't exactly well-known for their
horror movies. They've made a couple of mediocre
attempts over the past couple of years. Most of
them have been unoriginal and failed to deliver
any real scares, while others have tried to be a
little more ground-breaking, but ended up feeling
like bad jokes. Pamahiin (roughly translated into
Superstition) falls into both of these categories.
Asia can't rely on creepy ghosts anymore since most
of us have grown sick of the whole concept. This
is something which the people behind the incredibly
generic "horror movie", Pamahiin, obviously haven't
realized. It tries to copy several Asian horror hits
at the same time and even though it should be scary,
it's just not. There's not a minute of suspense to
be found in here and the ghosts never make any
surprise appearances. And if you think that's bad,
just wait till you see the make-up on these ghosts.
The make-up team must have bought their cosmetics at
the local grocery store since I've seen kids at
Halloween with better make-up.
I'm probably being a bit too harsh on this poor movie
so here's something that I did like. The cinematography
is surprisingly good and the use of colours is very
interesting. The directing is also pretty decent,
well, it's average, but seeing as how bad everything
else is about this film, average is more than enough.
Those are all the positive things I can find to say
about Pamahiin though, so back to the negative stuff.
The movie is very inconsistent and some things are
just a bit off. For example, for the first 30 minutes
or so we're fed with at least twenty different
superstitions. Apparently, everything you do in the
Philippines is bad luck. Then, all of a sudden, the
superstitions stop and have little to do with the
rest of the film. So why did we have to learn about
all these superstitions about not sweeping the floor
after you've seen a dead person etc, I just never
saw the point. Maybe it was just to kill running
time, I don't know.
So you're probably wondering why I'm even giving this
a rating of 1/5. Well, to be honest with you, apart
from the nice cinematography and the decent directing,
there was one more thing I liked - in a so bad that
it's good way. There was this scene where a woman
got killed by a huge clock, which had me laughing for
five minutes. It was just so completely random and
out of the blue. Sadly, that's no reason to check
this movie out though. Unless you like poorly animated
butterflies flying around on your screen, I don't
think you will find much pleasure out of watching this.
Sorry Philippines, you're just going to have to try a
bit harder if you want to make it in the horror business.
Nope.
The soundtrack was all right and I don't think that
the soundtrack is to blame for the fact that there
was no atmosphere.
Apart from a funny killer-clock scene and some nice
cinematography, Pamahiin doesn't have a lot to offer.
It's incredibly generic and doesn't even provide you
with any scares so I see absolutely no reason to why
you should check this one out. If you want to see a
Philippine movie, I suggest you check out "The Echo"
aka "Sigaw" instead.
Review By: AnthroFred
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