FrightFest Halloween review – Posthouse
A manananggal (remover) is a creature from Filipino folklore – a fanged hag with bat-wings who can separate the upper part of her body and float towards victims. The Manananggal (1927) was probably the first horror film made in the Philippines, and starred Mary Walter (later the vampire granny of Creatures of Evil, 1966) – it’s a lost film; a note at the end of this movie states that all Filipino silent cinema is lost. In Posthouse, editor Cyril (Sid Lucero) – scion of a troubled filmmaking family – neglects his day job (putting together a commercial for Silky Soap) in order to work on restoring a fictional version of The Manananggal which seems to have a curse on it, involving various members of his family in tragedy. His film student daughter Rea (Bea Binene) pitches in on the task in the windowless, brick-walled post-production house where Cyril puts in long hours, ever tempted to fuel his obsession with Jack Daniel’s.
Director-writer Nikolas Red crafts convincing old footage, giving his manananggal a few Nosferatish qualities (long fingers, mostly), and hinting that the melodramatic plot of the film has been repeated over and over in the protagonist’s family ever since … and when humans come apart in the middle or at the neck they don’t fit back together again. Eventually, the creature from the film begins to stalk the posthouse. This is a film-obsessed character study interspersed with folkloric horror/stalker scenes – imagine Berberian Sound Studio but with Vic Diaz in the lead and a floating batwinged half-demon witch to manifest the dread and guilt of someone who’s spent more time over antique editing equipment than with his family.
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