MOVIE REVIEW: “TRAGIC THEATER” – A Tragedy of a Movie

Tikoy Aguiliz’s Tragic Theater has been stirring up some controversy for the past month; The cause of that is the film’s “horrific” contents (originally rated as “X”) being “too scary” as the MTRCB plans to ban the film from being released for such. But when the movie finally made its release here for the past week this reviewer has decided that maybe it was better off banned for being the opposite of what it was meant out to be (and it is not being scary – AT ALL).­­­

Plot Summary:

Tragic Theater is based on the novel of the same name by GM Coronel and it follows a character named Annie (Andi Eigenmman), a government official of the Department of Tourism and she is assigned to rehabilitate the Manila Film Center after its unfortunate fate that causes the lives of hundreds of men years ago.

Of course, it’s not an easy task considering that the place was said to be haunted by the same people who was in that accident. She then recruits her old friend Father Nilo (John Estrada) along with his group of spirit communicators to help her go in contact with the spirits and convince them to leave the place. And the haunting ensues, as they underestimated a terrifying presence in their midst.

GHASTLY INTERRUPTIONS

Just by reading the plot summary you do have the thought of “well, this movie actually has a pretty neat premise!” and it does but unfortunately the film lacks the right direction for it to execute the concepts being handed out to the audience. As a result, the narrative of the film is one big mess; Aguiliz’s direction is like watching a self-proclaimed artist do a bad Jackson Pollack painting. Even though they have all the right materials and enough inspiration to do so, he keeps throwing all these unnecessary splattered colors that don’t go well with the others and the film becomes a filthy “piece of art” in the long run.

The plot can be straight forward but the problem here is that the movie has a lot of interruptions as one scene interrupts the other. Think of it this way, the film is already in its climax but suddenly the film cuts to an extensive flashback of Christopher De Leon’s character facing a similar spirit, it was overly long and it didn’t really provide us some information that could’ve gave focus to the film’s almost non-existent threat. It is very typical of the movie to do stuff like that (One scene upstages the other when it comes to its cringe-worthiness), they keep cutting to different scenes abruptly that don’t really drive the movie forward, and in fact some of those events were never even addressed again.  They have so many long takes of one scene (what a waste of good cinematography) and most of the time you’ll see three quickly chopped shots of two people walking in three different angles, with all of these inconsistencies happening I was just sitting there going “what was the point of that?!”.

“TOO SCARY” – PFFFFTTTT

 You are going to ask “wait, was this movie scary as they presumed to be?” well to be honest I don’t know who they screened this to in the MTRCB but it wasn’t even scary (Heck! It didn’t even give us a cheap jumpscare). This was my experience, I was sitting down anticipating the film’s first scare with my fingers pressing my ears and my eyes squinted but as the sound releases with that typical noise where they show something scary, the rendered effects and the make up for the evil spirits instead come off as being unintentionally funny and the crowd bursting out laughing. (and when a crowd laughs at something that is supposed to be scary you already have one big problem with your “horror movie”).

The said terror in the movie aren’t really much of a threat either as they are just reduced to making threats (“Ewan Ko” is the best answer to scare somebody about your motives, spirit) and be left just sitting around for the most part of the movie. You are left in your seat wondering why they want these young people out of their property so bad outside of the reason they say, as their motives are as vague as their existence in the human world. Because of that reason, you don’t feel as if they are a threat at all or feel the film’s peril towards the latter half of the film (you’ll find yourself trying to figure out who the main antagonist is throughout the movie).

THE CHARACTERS ARE GHOSTS THEMSELVES…

 The film works with a big cast of people but the material given to them weren’t really enough to work with and they end up being expendable supermodels in this movie. The script was one of the reasons why it is unintentionally funny; they make all these unmotivated decisions and blurt out the corniest lines they could say. The characters are ghosts themselves since I never really care for them and they never really impact me at all. In fact there were even characters who appear and reappear so suddenly (blink and you’ll miss the only guy you buy as a supernatural communicator).

The film tries its best to make Andi Eigenmann’s Annie be interesting when she actually isn’t. And trust me, you’ll end up hating her early on in the movie. With all the things happening to her, I didn’t really care that much for her along with her gang of young supermodels as spirit communicators. They really tried everything to make us care on them, they even made her a rape survivor but like I said it was one of those scenes that were out of place in the movie (and they show that scene gratuitously). It gets irritating when she just brushes off the warnings they told her even though she believes in the peril at hand. In her journey she doesn’t seem to be interested on what’s going on (again, despite her belief of the supernatural peril) or at least help the audience try to unravel this already confusing plot. I feel like I was watching a bored teenager  do a walkthrough of a school fair’s horror house only it is uninteresting to watch. Other names like Estrada and De Leon on the other hand looked like they are doing their best to make something out of the material given to them but the results ended up them over-performing with campy results.

CONCLUSION:

 In the end, Tragic Theater is a messy movie. Though it is backed up by an interesting concept the results ended up being catastrophic due to the film’s many inconsistencies; namely the writing, the directing, the editing, and the acting. Resulting to an un-scary yet unintentionally funny movie entitled to be a “horror film”. To the film’s credit it does live up to the title – what a tragedy this movie is….