‘All Souls Night’ review: Paper-thin horror

Oggs Cruz

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‘All Souls Night’ review: Paper-thin horror
'All Souls Night' has already used up most of its tricks, most of which are overused tropes

The lack of imagination isn’t the most glaring problem of Aloy Adlawan and Jules Katanyag’s All Souls Night. There is actually plenty of imagination here. The most glaring problem of the film is that it is paper thin, and it absolutely knows it.

Scaring tactics

That is where all the imagination sets in.

The plot is bare. The film’s prologue pictures what seems to be a perfect family about to enter their house from a fun day out. After the opening credits, the house feels vastly different and far from the one that saw the family in its intimate moment. Instead of the family, we see a girl trying to see if there is anyone home. She is Shirley (Andi Eigenmann), a working student who was sent to the home to work as an all-around helper. She is coldly let in by the mother (Yayo Aguila), a peculiar woman who is suspiciously overprotective of whatever secrets the house is hiding.

The film creeps on. It literally moves at a glacial pace to unravel its mystery. By the time things get interesting, All Souls Night has already used up most of its tricks, most of which are overused tropes.

In one particular sequence, Shirley wakes up one night to see her ward missing. She searches for her through the intricate hallways of the strangely ornate home, only to find the little girl bleeding and in pain. From the moment Shirley awakes up to when she finds her ward, the film has ticked off almost all its scaring tactics, from jump scares to figures quickly flickering past the corner of the screen to strange noises to eccentric ornaments populating the house. The film overdoes the scares, oblivious to logic, common sense or any idea that any normal person confronted with a deluge of spooks would never walk around a haunted house in the middle of the night. 

WORK. Shirley is let in by a secretive woman (Yayo Aguila) as helper in their house.

Shell of stereotypes

All Souls Night forgets that a good horror needs to have good characters.

Shirley isn’t a good character. She is hazily composed. Her backstory is told through sloppily written conversations and what’s left are scenes wherein she acts without intent and motivation. She isn’t a heroine worth rooting for simply because she is just a shell of stereotypes and clichés. It’s actually quite unfortunate because when the film finally unravels its unsettling premise, it begins to show some promise that is ultimately foiled by the fact that the main character is far too rudimentary to shoulder the heft of what the film is aiming for.

There is a real attempt to portray evil as a living and breathing entity. There is a bid to push the boundaries towards something more crazed and wicked than the inconsequential scares the film earlier displayed. However, despite the sudden surge of imagination, the film still fails to get past the thickness, still recruiting the remaining tricks in its bag to stretch the storyline towards its deflated end. All Souls Night is muddled by its use of slow motion, turning its climax into a slog rather than a much-needed salvation. 

HELP. Shirley helps the child she's handling after an accident.

Extra weight

In the end, All Souls Night just feels inconsequential.

It would have been better as an episode of a horror triptych rather than a feature-length film. The film is padded, and all that extra needless weight renders it dull and plodding.  – 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. 

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