A Sundo that doesn't take you anywhere

CEBU, Philippines - The premise is interesting enough: Romano (Robin Padilla) is a former military operative who wakes up from a coma after getting hurt in a gun fight and discovers that he sees dead people, specifically the souls of people who come to pick up (or, in Filipino, sundo) the souls of the dying.

For some time during my early childhood, we had helpers from the Visayas to take care of me and my siblings. Many of them were from my parents’ Cebu hometowns, while some were from neighboring provinces. I was fond of those who shared stories from back home, especially if their stories touched on the supernatural.

In early afternoons, when we had to take a nap, I would pester them to tell me about ghosts and elementals, and, sometimes, I would find myself engaged in stories about forest spirits who offered enchanted food to unsuspecting mortals or tales of supernatural creatures disguised as animals who scared unwitting nighttime travelers or random tips on how to spot elementals blending in with humans, especially from noon up to three o’clock. Perhaps it is this part of my childhood that brought out the storyteller in me. In any case, I’ve always thought our many creepy superstitious beliefs should be mined for film and fiction.

Ever since I could watch movies on my own, I’ve always made it a point to watch Filipino horror films—to the disapproval of my mother, who thinks I’m only feeding myself evil thoughts. For me, however, it’s a way of getting back the stories that had my heart racing as a child and it’s also a way of preserving, albeit in a diluted or even messed up way, some of our enthralling folklore.

In the 1990s, I delighted in the movies Tiyanak and Aswang. I try to catch Shake, Rattle and Roll all the time for that one-third of the film that would feature a real Filipino story (often the one that features an aswang). Last weekend, I caught Sundo on the big screen, expecting it to be an excellent watch, because it was one of the more popular superstitions that, at least to my knowledge, hadn’t been explored on the big screen.

The premise is interesting enough: Romano (Robin Padilla) is a former military operative who wakes up from a coma after getting hurt in a gun fight and discovers that he sees dead people, specifically the souls of people who come to pick up (or, in Filipino, sundo) the souls of the dying. (My grandfather, Tranquilino Rivera, was said to have called out names of the long dead in the days before he uttered, “Hay, salamat!” and breathed his last. I’m sure many of you have heard the same of your own dead.)

When Romano agrees to accompany his blind sister Isabel (Rhian Ramos) to Manila, they hitch a ride with a childhood friend, Louella (Sunshine Dizon), who knows the eye doctor that could help Isabel. Three other people hitch a ride in the Manila-bound van driven by Louella’s driver Baste (Mark Bautista): a recently widowed woman, Lumen (Glydel Mercado), her nephew Eric (Hero Angeles), and an aspiring actress they picked up on the road, Kristina (Katrina Halili). The van narrowly escapes a fatal accident, which Romano foresees in a dream and is able to prevent. Soon, however, they realize that they are still on Death’s list and their sundo (complete with black, smoky eyes) would be unrelenting in their insistence to pick their souls up—until all their names are crossed out on the list.

It is at this point that Sundo takes on the feel of Final Destination—minus the sincere effort of the characters to stay alive and the interesting dynamics between people who are strangers to each other yet facing a common threat. The characters shift from one gory scene to another in which it doesn’t seem they have any problems. For example, one of them is electrocuted and burnt to a crisp, and the next thing you know, they’re eating sizzling squid in a canteen. I don’t know about you, but that would be the last thing I would order. Heck, food would be the last thing on my mind!

 There are many scary scenes in the movie, mostly Romano’s encounters with the spirits of the dead. I particularly enjoyed the image of decomposing feet floating beside him—I mean, who hasn’t heard of floating spirits? However, the special effects tend to succumb to overkill. The visions are scary enough by themselves, but they just had to add that overused “breathing-slash-panting” sound effect.

The strength of the film is Topel Lee’s technical expertise. Each scene is well-composed and I would have totally freaked within the first twenty minutes, if not for the story’s many flaws, foremost among which are the many unnecessary details that only muddle up the film. For example, why make Romano a military operative at all? What place does a gun have among ghosts? The only reason I can think of is that it is Robin Padilla, an action star, who portrays him.

The acting is not outstanding. This is unfortunate, because I’ve come to appreciate Padilla’s acting skill in other genres, and I was rooting for him in his initial foray into horror. His portrayal of Romano, a troubled man haunted by both combat stress reaction and ghosts, is rather comical. I suspect, however, that the editing is largely at fault. The way his scenes play out, I’m likely to believe that the only thing that keeps Isabel from thinking her brother is on drugs is that fact that she’s blind.

As for the other members of the cast, they’re all competent, but there’s nothing memorable about their performances. Sunshine Dizon seems poised to take over more mature roles—and I don’t mean this as a euphemism for sexy. She holds her ground against Padilla. The young Rhian Ramos, on the other hand, plays a blind woman well (it’s just strange how her blindness was supposed to have been caused by an accident, but her pupils are bluish-white). It was good to see Hero Angeles again, although I’m not sure if he could do horror, thanks to his dimples.

The biggest failure of this film is failing to go deeper into the lore itself. I don’t understand why they have to make Death—or Kamatayan—a seemingly evil monster, in effect, displacing it from the Filipino psyche and requiring the movie to work harder than necessary.

It doesn’t take a monster to scare us. Just poise us on the verge of the unknown. Any Filipino who listened to supernatural tales from the provinces would know that.

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