By NEIL RAMOS
Beyond giddy romances and heart-wrenching dramas, Filipinos love a good scare.
This is made obvious with the multo, the mananananggal, the mangkukulam, among others, now familiar entertainment fare.
No surprise there, of course, as we all grew up with these creepy creatures, no thanks to our elders who often make use of them to lull us to sleep.
It should be noted though that more often than not, our horror efforts fail to achieve their objective with some even eliciting laughter due to them mostly being done on the cheap.
Our gripe lies mainly on the special effects that render the supposedly scary creatures funny if absurd.
Thankfully, this is about to change with Viva Entertainment and TV5 coming together to tap critically-acclaimed directors for the horror anthology series “Kagat ng Dilim.”
Onboard are: Richard Somes (Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival Best Director for “Yanggaw”); Lawrence Fajardo (Sinag Maynila Film Festival Best Director and Netpac awardee at Vesoul Asian Film Festival for “Imbisibol”); Paul Basinillo (director of the hit mini-series “Tabi Po”); and Rae Red (QCinema International Film Festival and Gawad Urian Best Director for “Babae at Baril”).
The four are one in their goal to uplift the horror genre doing away with special effects and focusing mainly on our core strengths: excellent storytelling and superb acting.
Fajardo said, “We can’t compete with Hollywood pagdating sa special effects pero I think sa horror stories talagang mas mayaman naman ang kultura natin so, ‘yun ang focus namin talaga for ‘Kagat Ng Dilim.’”
Somes noted, “It’s all about creativity and execution. Malaki o maliit man ang project, ako personally, I squeeze myself creatively to come up with the best effort possible.”
“Sa akin kasi ang horror is not about the effects. It’s about the storytelling. Kahit mayaman ka sa CGI kung pangit ang pagkalatag ng story, wala pa rin,” he added.
“Wala namang bago e, everything has been said or shown before from zombies to vampires…so it all boils down to how you actually make the audience invest sa story. It’s how you affect their psyche. So, I think, ito, sa ‘Kagat Ng Dilim,’ maganda na naka-focus kami sa mga urban myth, mga local legends, kasi buo na yan sa mind natin as Filipinos.”
Red is thankful that Viva provided them with talented actors who helped a lot in making their vision come alive.
“Naniniwala ako na malaking parte ng execution namin as directors ang artista dahil sa kanila a-ankla ang imahinasyon ng audience e. I’m happy that Viva was very supportive in giving us the best talents for this project,” she said.
“Kagat ng Dilim” is to air starting Nov. 27, 9:30 PM, on TV5.
