Director: Mauro Gia Samonte
Year: 1989
Country: Philippines
Alternate Titles: Anak ng demonyo
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Following their son's birth, a family soon becomes concerned about him as he grows to adulthood when a series of strange events leads them to believe that something is wrong with him, and they must race to stop the dark forces protecting the deadly secret lurking within him.
Reviews:
This was quite a surprisingly enjoyable effort. A lot of the film's positives come from the rather strong and striking attempt to utilize the Gothic atmosphere in order to help its suspenseful nature. This starts off the first half of this one incredibly well with the opening scenes in the underground cave where the conspiring forces gather together to engage in the ritualistic ceremony to bring the devil to them, where the rocky cave and demonic structure with the flowing river out of it make for quite the fun setting. These carry on into the rest of the first half as they continually appear around them, whether by appearing to ward off the attempt to smother him in his bedroom or the attack in the cemetery, which are also quite fun.
This does get dropped later on, but there's also the fact that this one manages quite nicely to follow along the plot line from the original film and manages to incorporate them into the events here, which gives this one some rather enjoyable scenes following on from these elements. The way in which it switches over to the party death is quite nice, as the scene is suspenseful anyway and brings about a nice shock with the twist in the death of the guilty party, as well as carrying out the big plot line from the later effort of spending a vast amount of the time alternating between keeping his identity a secret and using his powers to get back at his enemies. Although the action does slow down slightly, it has enough going on with his freak-outs and changes to stay interesting as it heads into the finale which is a fine return to the Gothic fun with the different forces coming together to include the wild resurrection of the father at the graveyard during the funeral to battles with his true self and bringing the romance angle full-circle with the tender revelation at the end meshing nicely with the Gothic action and locations.
While there's a lot of great stuff in this one, there are a few elements that hold it back. One of the biggest issues is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of interest coming from the romance angle that pops up in the middle of the film. Not only is the whole affair quite clichéd and not really all that interesting by playing into ever-familiar themes of so many films that try to play off following his heart versus his preordained destiny, but the melodramatic nature of the scenes drains the pacing down to an absolute crawl, which doesn't really impress all that much. Featuring too many scenes of them engaging in deep discussions with their family members about what's going to happen to them, but there's the endless motorbike race that just makes for an exceptionally dull effort, with these types of scenes holding back the horror aspects to a large degree throughout. The other flaw here is the film's rather cheap-looking special effects, which are a notch above cringe-worthy, although the scenes of the infant version sporting wolfman-like hair and devil horns obviously glued to his face in patches make for a hilarious sight rather than a chilling one. These here are what hold this one back.
Overview: ***/5
A decent enough offering, but it does have some flaws, there's quite a lot more to like here than expected for this kind of genre fare, even though some of the issues here are big enough to hold it down. Those with an appreciation for this kind of low-budget genre efforts or who are curious about it will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
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