Aurora

Cinematography & musical score is a good 10/10 for a local film. I consider this as an art film where you try to grasp and confuse yourself from its storyline. The film starts to boast its great cinematography and fresh take in color-grading - for a local film, that's very impressive. I find myself trying to think of ways to make Aurora a good horror/thriller film that will leave the audience shrieking for jump scares. Aurora has tons of eerie shots which is quite effective in one (literally just one) jump scare from the whole movie but I still think they could've done better.

The ending was confusing, it's one of those psychological films where they want the audience to create their own plot that leaves the story open-ended with a lot of "Hows" & "Whys". Overall it's a fresh new take in cinematography and color-grading when it comes to local films, I hope to see more local films like Aurora that's well executed everything is a 10/10 the only thing wrong with it is how they deliver the plot - it's a messy shipwreck.

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.

Aurora: A Philippines horror film involving a ship wreck and ghosts wanting to go home. A coastal village has been visited by death in the form of a shipwreck, the remains of the ship are visible on rocks close to shore. Relatives seek the remains of their loved ones but many bodies are still missing, perhaps trapped in the wreck. The event has cast a dark cloud over the village, fishermen can no longer sell their catch, peope move to the city. Leanna (Anne Curtis) runs an inn, when the relatives of the victims leave she is without customers and links up with fishermen to collect rewards for recovering the missing bodies. But she and her young sister Rita (Phoebe Villamor) catch glimpses of strange characters, hear voices and even seem to make contact with spirits of the missing.

A slow moving film which might have benefited from a 15 minute cut in it's running time. However it was massive success in the Philippines, made for P$3 million, it took in P$100 million at the box-office. The ghosts are well imagined and appear to be seeking closure just as much as their relatives are. While not malevolent they will seize on to divers who approach the wreck. Ghosts appear in windows and flashbacks of the grounding of the ship are related through stories and visions. A cover-up may have taken place and the real cause of the shipwreck turns out to be even more frightening than any conspiracy could hope to conceal. Director/co-writer Yam Laranas delivers an engaging Ghost Story. 7/10. On Netflix.

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.

Me and the Philippines just don't seem to be on the same page, this is only the third Filipino movie I've seen and despite it only getting a 3/10 it's still the best of the bunch!

It tells the story of a small island community, they're reeling from a ship wreck that is still visible from their shores. They're living in poverty due to the side effects of the disaster but some people are determined to see about locating the dead so they can be laid to rest. But yes this is a horror so ghostly things are afoot.

I liked the premise, it's a pretty movie with interesting characters and I was curious which direction they were going to go with it. Alas it became apparent around the half way mark that the direction wasn't a good one and certainly not an original one.

The movie is dark, bleak but looks great for a movie from the Philippines. Sadly however it's one of those silly supernatural movies that makes the rules up as it goes along and ultimately doesn't make a vast amount of sense.

I get what they were going for, I just think they failed miserably.

Regardless this is still the best movie I've seen the country put out.

The Good:

Some great visuals

Interesting concepts

The Bad:

Falls apart badly

Certain aspects make little to no sense