Aurora

I stumbled across this by chance when I was browsing Netflix. Catching up on some Western horror films I'd missed that were recommended to me, Aurora popped up as a suggestion for me. I originally skipped past it before realising it was Filipino and I went back to it to watch the trailer. I've been looking to have my first films and dramas in each country on MDL so I decided to go ahead with Aurora being my fist Filo film after clarifying it was Filipino.

My Twitter friends said that it was hyped up in the Philippines but it was commonly held as a bit of a flop within the horror genre.

Now, Aurora is made and is meant to be a horror film. I went into it expecting to be a little spooked, not to a high degree because of the reviews I had heard said it was pretty bad. The few CGI effects to give this the horror theme completely tanked for me, and I won't lie - the horror is pretty bad. It doesn't hold its own as a horror film in any form.

However, the acting in this, the story behind it are intriguing. It kept me hooked in, it kept me rooted in my seat in pure curiosity. This is definitely a much more sad thriller than a horror film. I finished this feeling devastated, with tears in my eyes after the credits began to roll. The acting in this made this utterly amazing, the cast truly brought the feelings in this to life. It felt like this was currently happening in Asia, watching these families go through their loss and watching Leanna and her younger sister was going through hell. The music in this was as well amazing, it fits the film perfectly; there wasn't a single score in this that didn't help my emotions lift or drop alongside the story.

I think the best way to go into this film is to not expect a good horror film. Expect a sad, chilling thriller that is similar to many real-life occurrences around the world. Not as good as it could have been as a horror film, but definitely give this a try if you like sad films.

Napaka pangit na pelikula. Gin de Mesa please po wag na kayong gumawa ng pelikula. Please please please po. Zero 🌟

This film could have been so promising as it had a really good storyline, great acting and casting as well as cinematography but by the time they used the special effects in showing the big giant ghost, it just went all downhill! I guess the ship was already sinking even before the journey began.

I liked it. I thought the main actress was great and she made me care what happened to her and her little sister. The movie seemed very old fashioned to me, like something I would have watched back in the 70's. Maybe it was the music. They kept playing scary music before anything scary was happening, like they used to do to foreshadow scary events coming up back in the day. The music itself was OK but it didn't seem to fit a lot of the early scenes, in my opinion. I did enjoy it though. I like a good old fashioned ghost story.

I didn't really enjoy the movie, but in case the people that worked in it are reading these, I'm going to write first about the one thing I really enjoyed about the movie: It managed to scare and make me feel uneasy WITHOUT JUMPSCARES. This is a massive accomplishment, given that nowadays most horror movies relly on them.

This movie is sad but not in a "dramatic movie" way. It's sad because it could have been an awesome horror movie but they, somehow, managed to do everything wrong.

The first hour of the movie is full of drama and sadness, a ship crashes near a small town and suddenly everyone is leaving. The reason is the ship that crashed, but there's not much explaining of that, so I don't know if it was because they thought it was haunted or because the town's economy relied on tourists that would not come because of a shrunken ship. I don't know, and there was plenty of time to explain it, yet they didn't.

Then there's the two sisters' story... At the very beginning I thought they were mother and daughter but then it turns out they're not. Their family story is told in a really brief, out of context flashback, which leaves you confused for a few seconds until you kind of understand what's going on. Yet again, that part of the story was interesting and I would have loved for them to show us more of that, because it gives you the reasons for most of the things the main character, Leanna, does.

There's many other stuff that I think was easy to correct but they somehow missed it, characters that seem to appear and disappear out of nowhere without really adding to the plot, or they add so little that they were just a misuse of budget.

Then, the ending is just so poor and it could have been such a masterpiece. This makes me so sad. It's weird, they tie real life stuff that could be real and awesome with a weird ghost story, extremely poor and undeveloped, the ending is just weird.

The worst thing about the movie was that I spent one hour and 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. It's awful, it's boring. Really if you consider watching this movie, just watch the introduction and then fast forward it to the end, most of the movie is a waste of time.