‘Chain Mail’ Review: Gross waste of talent

MANILA, Philippines – Let’s start from the very beginning, which in this case, isn’t a very good place to start.

Chain Mail is doomed to fail from the start. It is a project with low ambitions, at least for the studio that bankrolled it. Whatever artistic merit the film may have is but a by-product of the fact that artists are playing craftsmen in this wholly capitalist endeavor.

Inappropriate pageant

It is nothing more than content. Its needless abundance in characters is owed to the fact that its producers are also talent managers who require their wards to be seen in as much media as possible, to maintain a certain sense of being in demand. That said, the film feels like an inappropriate pageant of old and new faces instead of the proper horror flick it promises to be.

 

 

It could have been forgivable if majority of the talents are capable of infusing some soul into the stereotypes they are recruited to portray. However, the acting’s lamentably inconsistent, with some of the actors and actresses failing to even feign concern at the sight of a beloved friend violently dying. They just add to the ludicrousness of this tragic exercise, instead of making things more tolerable.

Devoid of discourse

 

On paper, Chain Mail is full of promise. Its tale of friends who are killed one by one after ignoring a suspicious e-mail guns for relevance in a world that has become so reliant on digital communication and all its underlying caprices.

Sadly, the screenplay written by director Adolfo Alix, Jr. and his writers Jerry Gracio and Agnes de Guzman, is a thing of meager aspiration, content with skin deep portrayals instead of digging further into the psyche of the generation it attempts to scare and terrify.

There are traces of intellect here and there, with the film echoing a certain pining for an age where post offices are still relevant in the scene where a post office worker is forced to resign. However, everything else is dumb, dull and devoid of any possibility for discourse.

Routine craftsmanship

 

Alix directs Chain Mail without any hint of passion. This is clearly just work for him. Right from the start, the film already gives off the stench of routine craftsmanship.

Its initial sequence, where a woman is mysteriously killed by a jeepney that rampages into an Internet shop, is drab and sloppy, lacking any tension or atmosphere to effectively communicate the feeling of dread that could have made the film less grating.

Instead of investing in a set-up that would make the film’s series of deaths worth waiting for, Alix opts for gruesome visuals to evoke fear. The film is brimming with blood and pain, but all without reason or logic. 

The film’s prosthetic-veiled ghost is a ghastly sight during its first few appearances. However, its repetitious apparitions, all coupled with the standard shock gimmickry that most unimaginative horror films employ, render everything bland, especially in the end.

Irreversible mess

Chain Mail is a horrible film. It is as incoherent as it is flimsy. It is full of uninteresting characters who aren’t anything else but fodder for a vengeful ghost with an Internet-age haunting method.

The most depressing thing about Chain Mail however is not how ludicrously bad it is but the amount of talent that had to be wasted to create what essentially is an irreversable mess. – Rappler.com 

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios