Audience Member
Pridyider (Fridge) (Rico Maria Ilarde, 2012)
[ed. note: I apologize in advance if maybe I came down a little hard on Fridge. You see, I had a gloriously snarky, sarcastic review all ready to go {because, you know, I still thought the movie sucked even before this occurred}, finished it, swear to the sell-by date I hit Save, then when I was working on other review this weekend, I noticed the title still sitting here with nothing under it...so at some point last week I lost my entire original review of Fridge and about half a review of Growth, and possibly more stuff I haven't discovered yet. This is in no way Rico Maria Ilarde's fault... OR IS IT? Perhaps his next film will be about a possessed dropbox...]
You might not realize it, but there is a subgenre of the possession film that deals with possessed inanimate objects. There is an even more specific sub-subgenre that revolves around possessed home furnishings. I kid you not. I actually already had two of them sitting here waiting for me to watch them already, 1991's The Refirgerator, which shares the appliance in question with Pridyider, and 2004's Excreamer, about a possessed toilet. (No, I'm not joking—look it up at IMDB). Of course, the “classic” example of the genre is Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, and the less said about that, the better (though granted, I've already reviewed that one, so I've said all I need to. At least, I hope so). I found out about this one thanks to the lovely Miyuki over at Nekoneko's Movie Litterbox, who reviewed it a few months back. I admit, I read her review, and I said to myself, “she can't be serious. This movie can't be as ridiculous as she's making it out to be.” So I hunted a copy down myself. And if anything, she understated the case. The culture that singlehandedly invented the bomba subgenre did indeed make a movie that ridiculous...and then some. (By the way, if you're wondering about the title, Pridyider, if you pronounce it correctly, is a slurred cognate of “Frigidaire”, and is Pinoy for “refrigerator”; presumably the English release was shortened to the vernacular term to distinguish it from the 1991 movie.)
Plot: Tina (Momzillas' Andi Eigenmann) has been living in California, in a dead-end relationship with Dick, the kind of cocky guy you can't help but loathe (Captive's Baron Geisler). She returns to Indonesia in order to sell her parents' long-abandoned house; all she knows of her parents is that there was some sort of unpleasantness that got her packed off to LA to live with her aunt. But now the house needs sold. She meets with a slimy attorney, Taballo (Awaken's Hector Macaso), who pushes her so hard to sell that she starts thinking that maybe it's not the best idea...and then she meets the (literal) boy next door, James (The Strangers' JM de Guzman), a refreshing alternative to bad-boy Dick. Everything seems to be going right...well, everything except her parents' possessed refrigerator that keeps trying to kill people. Hey, you're up against a killer fridge...okay, let's tough it out and call in the local medicine man. All that's missing is a freon-inflected voice saying “GET OUT.”
In its defense, Pridyider does have some moments of unintentional hilarity. They are, however, few, far between, and most importantly unintentional. And then you get to the Big Reveal. Oh, Tyson chicken, the Big Reveal. I thought 13B's Big Reveal was dumb. This makes it look like The Usual Suspects. This is the part where I would normally go off about wooden acting, camerawork that's more Nollywood than Bollywood, an inane score, etc. etc., but man, everything else that is wrong with this movie pales in comparison to its climactic sequence. If you can get through that without wanting to gouge your eyes out, you are a better man than I, Gunga Din. This is a mildly amusing curiosity if you like watching really terrible horror films, but that's all I can give you. *
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Its plot is overly ridiculous with tacky characters babbling silly dialogues. However, its self-awareness makes it a little bit admirable. Reading between all its cheesiness, there's an undeniable humor to be found. It just couldn't sustain enough payoff.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
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