IN DARKNESS WE LIVE

Stars: Mon Confiado, Alex Vincent Medina, Gerald Napoles, Imelda Schweighart, Gloria Sevilla and Katy Fernandez.
Writer/Director: Christopher Ad Castillo

Rating: 3.5/5

The intriguing output of Christopher Ad Castillo takes a decidedly twisted and shadowy turn in his latest, the bloody and often bewildering In Darkness We Live. The deliberately obfuscated narrative and grimy aesthetic won’t win over those who came down hard on his last film, the under-appreciated thriller The Diplomat Hotel, but there is no denying he is a keen craftsman with vivid, idiosyncratic storytelling instincts.

From an opening sequence that ‘rat-a-tats’ with Tarantino references, the Filipino auteur pummels into a second and third act homage-of-sorts to the bloody crime thrillers of Takashi Miike, the splattery body-horror of the French extremist movement and the flash-forward/back machinations of David Lynch’s dreamlike oeuvre. Castillo wears his filmic inspirations on his sleeve, that much is certain, but he displays the confidence and skill to make the references his own.

Audiences get a glimpse of what’s in-store from a credit sequence in which a terrified man, sodden with blood, lurches through thick undergrowth before being met by an ominous hooded figure. Soon, two black-suited tough guys (a stoic Mon Confiado; a fiery Alex Medina), with an offsider (Jerald Napoles) bleeding to death in their car, face-off in the aftermath of what we learn is a botched high-stakes robbery (ala, Reservoir Dogs). Watching on with a chilly indifference is Imelda Schweighart as the cold-hearted femme fatale, recalling both Pulp Fiction’s Honey Bunny and Natural Born Killer’s Mallory Knox as the film’s quietly unhinged, super sexed-up grindhouse x-factor.

Lost and without gas, they stumble into the jungle night and upon a vine-enshrouded mansion, home to a quivering young woman (Katy Fernandez) and her all-seeing grandmother (Gloria Sevilla). It is once inside the shadowy halls of the house that Castillo revs it up a notch, upping the mystery and the terror with a supernatural element in the form of little-known Filipino ‘Angel of Death’ myth, Ang Kumakatok (That Who Knocks). The filmmaker’s twisting of the psychological knife into his protagonists leads to the same ruthless vigour when they ultimately unleash upon each other. Suffice to say, the denouement is not for the faint-hearted.

Shot on a shoestring and reliant upon an occasionally intrusive soundtrack of thumping metal riffs to cover sequences that would have called for expensive foley work, there is no denying the rough-hewn edges of In Darkness We Live. Yet the handheld camerawork is employed with tremendous skill, only called upon to enhance proceedings, never cradle them. The twist ending (mostly) makes sense if you allow the film a few liberties, which is no problem given the adrenalized momentum that Castillo conjures.