I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Honestly Good Foreign Films




The яoad (2011) Phillipines

Not to be confused with the 2009 post-apocalyptic movie The Road, this movie (yes, I know the backward 'R' is annoying) is a Filipino import psychological thriller that would have been just fine as an intriguing mystery but of course the paranormal boogeyman BS sells right now so they had to incorporate that into the film to sell it to a larger audience. However, it is still a very watchable film, so if you want to see if first before finding out what I think please do - if not, it goes something like this:

You know how Hispanics often speak a combination of Spanish and English, a sort of Spanglish? Well the same is done here - disconcerting at first, but interesting. Half Filipino, half English, you still will need the subtitles provided to get the entire gist of the film. It's worth it though. This is one of those films that provides parts of the story like a recipe - they prepare one part, set it aside, prepare another part... in the end you have a story that is truly creepy (supernatural stuff aside) with a satisfying conclusion. It is beautifully filmed, great soundtrack and really good special effects. Now, totally unrelated question - how come it's the Phillipines but they speak Filipino? Why not Philipino? Just wondering...

We start with a lone figure in a car - a man. A gun is seen, a shot rings out - he's killed himself.

Now jump to a ceremony for a Filipino police officer. Luis is awarded a medal of valor for his investigation skills. After his award ceremony, a woman appears, asking all the officers if there is any new information. Apparently 12 years ago her two daughters went missing and nothing was ever found as to why or where they went. Luis asks the names -  Joy and Lara Luna. Despite the admonitions of his fellow officers he asks for their files, beginning his own investigation. We are then propelled to:

Story One, Year 2008: Three young people sneak out to practice driving at night. Avoiding a patrol car, they travel down a dark road that had been blocked by a flimsy wooden gate. Soon they realize that although the road is straight, they are lost as they keep seeing the same scenery go by time and time again (Maybe it's Hanna-Barbera Road. I suppose you are all too young to get that.). Panicking they turn around but the story is the same. Worse yet (here comes the supernatural) another car is following them and even shows up in front of them, each time passing them by. There is no driver. After one pass, one of the young girls notices someone in the backseat - bloody with a plastic sheet on her head. Finally, the harassing car crashes and since the young people's car has also stalled they get out to take a look. Horrified they see the car now appears to have been there for years, covered in rust and plant life. The back door comes off and they see the skeleton of someone in the back seat. One girl manages to call her dad for help (wow, a cell phone that works) but loses the connection. All are separated as other ghostly figures show up and as they finally get back together they're horrified to see that the old crashed car has burst into flames. In a panic, the boy runs off, the two girls attempt to drive away but as the car swings around, a girl named Ella falls out and the other girl runs into a tree and hits her head on the steering wheel. Ella screams as one of the bloody ghosts comes for her.

Somehow the police discover the road the young people drove down. They find the boy dead without a mark on him, and apparently the girl who hit her head on the steering wheel has also died. Ella has disappeared. They then find the crashed car and the skeleton, bearing a heart-shaped locket. They also find a dilapidated house which one officer searches but maintains nothing and no one is in it. At the morgue, the mother from the movie's beginning recognizes the locket as belonging to her missing daughter Lara. Our first ingredients are done.

Story Two, Year 1998: Having this in ten year increments is a little bit of a convenient device, but stick with me, it is worth it. Teenagers Lara and Joy are driving on the same dirt road. They are giggling, enjoying their drive when they pass a teenage boy walking down the road. Conveniently (sorry, it's good but not perfect) the car picks that moment to overheat. They ask the boy where they can find water and he leads them to his house. He goes inside without inviting them in. Sensing something wrong, Lara is prepared to run when he reappears, knocking them both out.

Lara finds herself chained to a bed. She hears her younger sister screaming but can do nothing. For whatever reason the boy (pretty strong little creep) drags Joy down to the basement and beats the ever living snot out of her, then wraps her head in a veil of some type. Lara speaks to Joy who seems to be in the next room, apologizing for not being able to protect her. When the little creep comes for her, she puts up one good fight - kicking, scratching, punching she manages to get him to leave her alone for the moment. The scuffle knocked the keys out of his pocket so she frees herself, going to get her sister but she's not there. We see Joy standing right next to her but Lara can't see her. Joy then starts to vomit dirt... 

Lara runs out to get to the car but cannot start it. The boy comes out and she runs and falls into a hole filled with corpses - one of them her sister. The supernatural aspect, remember? She'd been talking to an already-dead sister all that time. She runs down the road but the boy gets the car started and runs her over. He then puts a plastic bag over her head and ties it but as he drives down the road she sits up, startling him and making him crash into a tree. He gets out and the car catches fire, slowly burning the still-alive Lara inside.

We jump back to the present as Luis is searching for Ella. As he and another officer check the dilapidated house again, they find an old photo of who they assume are the old owners of the house. Luis finds Ella who keeps yelling at him 'let us go home' and passes out. He carries her out to a waiting ambulance and as her father tries to find out what happened she tells Lara's story as if she lived her tortures since she describes a teenage boy taking her 'and her sister' (she has no sister). And now for our final ingredients:

Story Three, Year 1988: If you think twisted dysfunctional families only exist in America, here's a bit of an education. A small boy lives in a house isolated deep in the woods. His mother has forbidden him to ever leave the house. The slightest infraction means hours in a small closet. His father is a preacher, but a pretty ineffective father or husband. His wife is carrying on an affair right in front of him, even greeting her lover right in front of her husband. At the same time, she insists that her son never speak to any girls because they are 'all dirty'. One day a young girl shows up to do the family's laundry. After going outside for just a moment he is caught by his mother and punished. When the girl tries to stop her the mother shoves her against the wall, cracking open her skull and killing her. She then makes her son clean up the mess, puts a veil around the girl's head and stuffs her in his closet of punishment.

She is sick of poverty and the fact that her husband refuses to take money from his congregation to help pay the bills. She announces that she's leaving him. Despite his protests, she says she is going. The next morning she wakes up her son. She's covered in mud. He goes downstairs to help with breakfast. His father shows up, also covered in mud. He tells his son his mother is gone. His son sees her sitting at the table. When the father shows him her corpse in a hole in the ground outside he freaks, running to the closet as he 'hears' her yelling at him and tells his father she's mad at him. The father finds him there, along with the corpse of the girl his wife killed. He freaks. The next morning when the boy comes out of the closet he finds his father has hanged himseslf in the living room. One little boy permanently messed up for life. Who somehow stays in the house without ever leaving until he's a teenager, when he killed Lara and Joy. And now it's time to bake our little creation...

Luis goes back to the house with another officer who says he's found a new padlock on a door. He kicks it in. It's a neat, orderly bedroom obviously lived in. As the officer looks around, he sees on the nightstand a policeman's dress hat and a medal of valor. Oops. He looks at Luis, who has a plastic bag. Luis strangles the officer using it and his belt. He then goes outside and Ella, still 'possessed' by Lara, points at Luis, identifying him as the boy who killed her. Luis draws his gun and shoots his boss twice in the chest. Now there are a billion officers standing around, why didn't he go down in a hail of bullets?  Oh well - he jumps in his car and zooms off, to get away from... everything I guess. Yes, our hero police officer Luis is the little boy turned massive psycho. As he zooms down the road, ghosts of his victims begin showing up in the car. Finally the car stalls and stops. He then sees the ghosts but cannot get out of the car. He draws his gun but that was a mistake... we see one of the ghosts take his hand and force him to shoot himself in the head. What seems like hours later, the other officers finally show up and find him dead in the car. The film ends with Luis as a young boy, finally able to go outside of his house and be free from his mother.

Pretty neat who-done-it kind of movie but you know I have to nit pick just a little. Like why are all the dead females ghosts but his father and the boy killed in 2008 are not? Why did the ghosts of the victims make more victims of the two kids in 2008? What the hell did they do? And why does the little boy turned massive psychopath killer get the happy ending of enjoying the outdoors and being free of his mother? Just little stuff I know but hey, even good movies have their duh moments.