#yanggaw

A Filipino film directed by Richard Somes. 

It has a mix of Horror-drama-mystery genre to which gave this film a vibrant scenery for thrill seekers out there. From an Ilonggo myth derived of Filipino myth about “aswang” meaning “monster”.

Set in a small village like a barrio hidden between the forest grounds lies the family where a certain female arbors dark, mysterious vibes amongst the happy family.

The pro-antagonist named Amor, later on carried a unique and unidentified sickness that no doctor or ambularyo couldn’t identify and cure, therefore leads to different concoctions for Amor but hints of no cure.

Mysterious beliefs o ‘paniniwala’ of a certain province are assured to be formed for people to be wary of. 

Later on from the movie shows animals, even people are butchered and brutally murdered in which, yes, Amor the protagonist at first then becomes the antagonist of the film causing uproar and tremendous killing spree in the village because of the unidentified disease that she have.

This is not your run-of-the mill horror movie. There are no special effects or computer-generated images to boast of. No monsters, no gory disfigured creatures. At the crux of Yanggaw is not the horror instigated by the presence of an aswang in a village in a remote town, it is the terror wrought on a family as a daughter is inflicted with an unknown disease that turns her into one.

Yanggaw dwells deep into the transformations - physical and otherwise, of a young woman turned aswang and how her family is forced to deal with her affliction.  Yanggaw’s explores the folklore of the aswang, prevalent in Philippine culture and society, as a disease that one contracts and that health centers and faith-healers do not have the remedy for. The premise of the film, the focus on the family’s moral dilemmas rather than on old, worn-out scare tactics for the sake of a few screams, was promising at the onset, but sadly proved to be its ruin in the end as the film uncontrollably degenerates into excessiveness.

Nevertheless, the initial directorial effort of Richard Somes in feature filmmaking is laudable. Yanggaw is a well-made film employing sound, aural orchestration, visual design, cinematography and editing to strike terror in the hearts of the viewers. The sound and aural orchestration is eerily filled with silences and screams, grunts and groans, evoking fear of the unseen and unsightly. The cinematography is apposite – concealing and revealing in a premeditated and studied manner. The visual design is commendable. All these elements make the fear palpable.

Directed and co-written by Richard Somes and bolstered by fine performances from Ronnie Lazaro, Joel Torre, and Tetchie Agbayani, Yanggaw is touted as one of the best films to ever come out of the CinemaOne Originals greenlighting project. Agreed. Despite obviously being made on the cheap, it humbly stands out as one of the most terrifying and satisfying horror films of the last decade, a period in local cinema that fed mostly on J-horror copycats with half-baked scripts.

Stricken with an unknown illness, a young woman goes home to her family in a farflung village. Her parents do everything within their capacity to help their daughter, but to no avail. It doesn’t take long before they discover that she has fallen victim to a vicious affliction, or yanggaw. She is infected with a mysterious venom that has transformed her into a flesh-eating monster, an aswang. Yanggaw, in rather simple yet effective ways, tells this story, the story of one family headed by a strong-willed patriarch, of what they are forced to do when one of them suddenly turns into something out of the ordinary, something that poses danger not only to others but also to themselves.