REVIEW: 'Strange Frequencies' takes audience on a dark descent into horror
We’d be hard-pressed to explain the joy of watching horror films at family-centric Christmas time, but if we had to hazard a guess, there’s just something appealing about being scared silly surrounded by people you love.
Over the years, the Metro Manila Film Festival has had no shortage of entries dealing with the supernatural, from 1984’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll, all the way through to last year’s Mallari, and 2024 is no exception, featuring no less than two in Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital and Espantaho.
Of the two, Strange Frequencies has the more offbeat proposition, being a localized remake of Korean horror blockbuster Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. The fun here isn’t in seeing attractive young people venturing into a known haunted facility and getting into supernatural shenanigans—though there is lots of that.
Taking a page from its Korean inspiration, the cast features several familiar faces playing (often unflattering) variations of their real-life selves, including Enrique Gil, Jane de Leon, Alexa Miro, Rob Gomez, and Miss Universe Philippines 2014 MJ Lastimosa.
Following an intro where two content creators meet an untimely demise in the titular hospital, the lines between fact and fiction are rendered negligible when the film goes full meta as the main cast, playing themselves, is interviewed by real-life showbiz reporter Gretchen Fulido.
Led by an enthusiastic Gil, the cast promote their upcoming Strange Frequencies livestream, where the five celebs will explore Taiwan’s abandoned Xinglin General Hospital, accompanied by content creator Raf Pineda and adventure blogger and ghost chaser Ryan “Zackaroo” Azurin.
Once removed from Fulido’s studio, each actor plays off their established public personas and tweaks them to fit the fictional context. With Gil playing ringleader, the live streamers are told to, “Always be filming,” to achieve their clout-chasing goal of three million viewers.
The subject of their show is Taiwan’s so-called “Killer Hospital” where a nurse purportedly killed a number of infants, while a cult ritualistically butchered patients. And if that wasn’t enough of a hook, the group is warned by a Taiwanese medium: don’t touch anything, don’t try to contact the undead, and—perhaps most importantly—don’t exploit the spirits for entertainment. Naturally, these rules are broken almost immediately, leaving the live streamers to fend for themselves until sunrise, when their local guide will unlock the door.
While it would be easy to point out the folly in everybody going in separate directions, there really wouldn’t be much of a movie otherwise, so we’ll let it slide. Of course, when people do (inevitably) break off from the group, lose contact, and engage in clearly ill-advised behavior for purposes of greed, curiosity, and/or vanity, the audience knows it’s in the service of the genre.
On the acting side, the cast comport themselves well, with Pineda playing the oft-ignored voice of reason that doubles as much-welcome comic relief. At the same time, Gomez leans into his role as the wannabe alpha whose every action demands a fatal comeuppance, while Gil acts as the doomed production’s puppet master. If there’s a weak link, it’s definitely Azurin, whose lack of acting experience is made up for (somewhat) by his stoic role as the sole believer in the group.
De Leon, Miro, and Lastimosa put in excellent performances, acting in much the way we imagine actual people would under similar circumstances. Okay, that’s not entirely true—if this writer heard undead babies giggling in the dark or someone calling my name from unexplored parts of an abandoned building, I’d be screaming at Enrique Gil to IMMEDIATELY let me the heck out, social media engagement be damned.
It must be said that the art direction and production here are superb, with director Kerwin Go and producer Erik Matti layering the film with recognizable horror tropes. Building on the found footage gimmick popularized by the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, the filmmakers incorporate multiple inventive angles and editing gags introduce a sense of foreboding long before things go inevitably awry. At the same time, the film plays on our cultural obsession with celebrity and social media authenticity, making the most of the audience’s built-in familiarity with (most of) the actors, while frequent inserts of the livestream’s comments section reminds us just how toxic the internet can be.
On that note, don’t let its status as a remake dissuade you. Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital is an endlessly suspenseful (and traumatizing) exercise in fear, making good use of established stars and technical filmmaking to deliver a solid entry into the MMFF’s tradition of bringing families together through horror.
Is it worth the screams? Very much so.
