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Villa Estrella: Unforgivably Bad


Tarra, Edson and Carmela all blame me for wasting their time and money. LOL.

It was my idea for us to watch Villa Estrella at the Gateway in Cubao. I suggested this because 1) I am a big horror fan, and I watch almost every horror movie that comes along, and 2) I trust Star Cinema in giving us only movies that are worth our time (never mind if they gave us films in the past with titles such as Tik Tak Toys My Kulukutoys, I do I die Dyuskoday, Tong Tatlong Tatay kong Pakitong Kitong, etc.)

The movie was merely a compilation of all horror cliches that ever existed. Let’s try to enumerate: 1) A neglected place far from the city; 2) A creature that resides in the water; 3)Projectile vomiting of green goo; 4) A character that will turn out to be already dead late in the movie; 5) A secret crime that led to the creature’s revenge; 6) Dolls; 7) Little girls with long hair; 8) Ghost in the mirror; 9) Hands touching the bida’s shoulder, bida will scream and turn around, only to see it’s her boyfriend… The list can go on (it even used the whistling kettle gulat trick from Tale of Two Sisters.)

It is so disappointing that the makers of this movie score every scene of this movie with gulat music (Hey don’t we musical score everything? We have background music for newscasts!). Also, the characters had the need to explain what are they doing or where they are (Geoff Eigenmann when he found himself walking underground, directly beneath the swimming pool: Nasa ilalim ako ng pool?)

Halfway in the movie, the people inside the theater are already sighing and restless. Some people are already even saying their critiques out loud. When the movie finished, our group decided to have fun and talk elsewhere just to recover from the disappointment (Edson was most especially disappointed since he’s a big Star Cinema fan). We discussed how this was NOT the director’s first horror movie since we saw his first at the UP Film Center back in college, something about a babaeng putik that starred Klaudia Koronel. And so we went to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and just insulted and made fun of each other, took silly pictures and tried to forget the hour and a half long travesty.


The biggest lesson we learned from this movie, is that Geoff Eigenmann has a completely legitimate reason for transferring to the rival company.


Pambawi: Aw, I’m being too hard on the movie. This isn’t the worst Filipino horror movie I’ve ever seen in cinema. That title still belongs to Barang (starring Juliana Palermo). Some movies are hilariously bad, Barang is depressingly horrible.

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