Director: Mikhail Red
Year: 2023
Country: Philippines
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Ghosts
Plot:
Struggling with her performance at work, an online content moderator dealing with a rash of videos about a bizarre suicide trend in the country is soon confronted by a series of strange encounters with a deadly supernatural entity following her and must find a connection to her past to stop it.
Review:
Overall, this was a solid enough genre outing. One of the better features here is the highly enjoyable genre setup that brings a highly effective correlation to modern society. As their job requires them to watch horrific videos involving tragedy and human suffering, there’s already a highly obvious predisposition to being unnerved and offput by the content featured involving mutilations, vicious beatdowns, and other forms of torture. This greatly affecting setup turns everything around the more unhinged she starts to get as the obvious commentary on the ruthlessness of the faceless corporate structures who are doing nothing to counter the obvious distress the whole thing is causing her as she’s also focused on the other personal issues including her mother’s disappearance from before.
That continues on with the building second half here, where the film shows the unease and discomfort she feels from watching the videos starts to impact others around her. Already unnerved by the earlier bits involving the treatment the company affords her with the pills and verbal harassment, causing her to mistrust the growing evidence that a ghostly figure is stalking her through the videos she’s forced to watch, everything she experiences here is that much more eerie and chilling. Featuring some genuinely unnerving scenes, including the continuing shots of the ghost stalking her through the various videos that soon turn into a rather bloody series of confrontations throughout the building complex for a fantastic finale, there’s plenty to like about this one, which holds it up.
The film does have some factors that hold it down. Among the biggest drawbacks is the incredibly clunky setup, which tries to say something regarding how the effects of this kind of content assumption have on a person. Rather than go in-depth about how the soulless corporation she works for tries to peddle pills instead of working with her to prevent that from happening, this one skirts the issue to focus on her relationships within the office, which underplays those facets. That also ends up delaying the majority of the ghost action until the very end, which is incredibly disappointing since this is introduced somewhat sloppily for it to be the main point of the film, so this ends up coming off quite bizarrely in a scenario not highlighting that factor. Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot to dislike here.
Overview: ***/5
A solid if somewhat problematic ghost film, there are some worthwhile factors on display that are somewhat undone by the positive points on display that end up being enough to lower this one overall. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare, or who are interested in the subject matter, will have the most to like, while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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