Hits and misses for 'Patient X'

Even if the much-anticipated release of Yam Laranas’ The Echo served to boost the ticket sales of the director’s next project, Patient X, I still say that the former being released within the same month as the latter was not such a good idea after all. The Echo, being a Hollywood film with a big-enough budget, especially as far as local films are concerned, set the bar too high for the Richard Gutierrez-produced horror film. Try as I might to focus on the positives—like, again, Laranas’ skill at using light and dark to tell a story and TJ Trinidad’s improving acting ability, never mind the underdeveloped character he was portraying—I just couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

I had been eagerly anticipating a “reinvention of the aswang,” as public relations buzz had it. I was definitely not expecting their incarnation as tall, fair-skinned, leather-jacket clad creatures capable of both taunting humans and developing a conscience. In other words, more like vampires. Good luck mining that for the international market.  

Richard takes the lead as Lucas, a doctor who survived an aswang attack as a young boy. He is haunted by his brother’s death in the hands of these vile creatures that had come to their house to take back Guada (Cristine Reyes), the wife of one of the aswang trio who had escaped from their clutches because she did not want to kill anymore human beings, even for food.

One day, after a particularly trying shift at the hospital, Lucas gets a call to return to his hometown. Apparently, the local police have captured the aswang responsible for his brother’s death. He reaches the hospital and is confused to see patients scrambling out of it and people covering the windows with crazy cut plywood. Head nurse Becky (Miriam Quiambao) and hospital head lead him to the locked basement, where, just a few minutes ago, police chief Alfred (TJ Trinidad) was burning Guada alive, in his thousand and one attempts to kill her, only to see her recover yet again.

Lucas goes to the hospital basement to see the suspect and is again confused—and yes, save for some moments of fright and surprise, he is always confused throughout the film—to see that Guada has not changed a bit, even if it is almost 20 years later. Guada tells him to let her go, or else many people would die, as her husband and his two brothers are coming for her.

The hospital buckles down for the aswang attack and the fun—or, better yet, a series of frustratingly avoidable deadly events—begins. Some of the deaths are downright stupid, you’d almost smack your lips in satisfaction because the character definitely had it coming—but then again, it’s almost always like that in monster films.

A big win for Laranas is that he was able to make a competent monster film without banking too much on special effects. The monsters were frightening enough; the location was eerie enough; and the actors were competent enough, save for Richard, whose acting range is still limited.

His confused look worked for him in Sigaw, because the situation called for him to simply be confused and scared about the mysterious things happening next door. Unfortunately, it just did not work for him in Patient X, because his character called for him to be a thinking one, an effective medical professional, a survivor who should have had no doubts whatsoever about the existence of aswangs and the danger they posed.

My reaction at the end of the film can be pretty much summed up in my reaction when the human characters finally figure out how to kill an aswang after so many failed attempts. You can’t shoot it, stab it with a knife, chop it up into pieces, or douse it with gasoline and burn it alive. You need to decapitate it.

That’s it, you ask? Yup, that’s it.Heck, that’s one of the first things I would have tried.

Next Laranas film, please.

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