Audience Member
Not as much as the level of "Feng Shui" and "Sukob", but then Miss MaricelSoriano's acting and the cute effects are just simply stunning...
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
Full Review
Audience Member
On paper, T2 has a lot of things going for it. A good premise, combined with a reliable director and a genuinely strong star ought to add up to a pretty good movie. But T2 just misses the mark with a structurally flawed script and a reliance on special effects that doesnât really help the movie overall.
Claire (Maricel Soriano) runs a travel agency, but she does volunteer work for an organization that helps orphans find foster homes. Claire is having trouble at home, and after a nasty fight with her husband, she decides to hide herself in volunteer work, escorting an orphan to his foster home in Samar. On the way back to Manila, they pick up Angeli, an eight year-old girl who just lost her father. Sheâs to be brought to her aunt back in Manila, but along the way, strange things begin happening. And when they find the tenement where her aunt lives, Claire finds an entire world she was never prepared for.
The mythology behind T2 is pretty strong, filled with little details that really fill out the world they exist in. On this level, the story is pretty entertaining, with some really interesting bits that could carry a movie on their own. Itâs the more mundane parts of this story that really couldâve used some work. The first act of this film hinges strongly on Claireâs marital problems, but that thread is never developed well enough to really make it matter. Structurally, itâs problematic, since they set up all this conflict in the beginning but just throw it all away, never dealing with its consequences. They couldâve done with it all together, and it wouldnât have changed the story much. All it did was slow the action down, and when we do get to the meat of the story, the big choices the characters make that really affect the outcome of the film, itâs all a little rushed. Things conclude too quickly, as a series of plot devices and conveniences take the place of real development.
The filmmaking is a little sloppy, especially considering that Chito Roño is directing. Roño, usually a master of atmosphere, is overtaken by the use of special effects. Special effects do have their place in cinema, but in horror movies, they usually come out hindering more than they help. Sure, they do provide possibilities for things that practical effects could never accomplish, and some of the stuff here actually looks good, but more often than not, theyâre just not scary. A legion of swarming rats is a scary idea, but actualized into computer-generated imagery, itâs never that convincing. That, and special effects shots in this country still suffer from distracting uneven color grading.
Maricel Soriano is quite good at being scared, but we often look to her to provide more than that. Here she suffers from not having much of a character to hold on to. Her character is so filled with little details that donât really go anywhere: sheâs an orphan, sheâs having marital problems, sheâs a travel agent; while all these thing are interesting in their own right, they never build to anything, and so Soriano is left with nothing but hysterics to fill her role. Young Mika dela Cruz has potential, and itâll be interesting to see where she ends up.
T2 is a personal disappointment. The basic premise of the story had a lot of potential, and Chito Roño is usually a safe bet in the filmmaking department. It feels like the ideas just werenât given enough time to stew, and things were yet again rushed into production with little real thought for what the whole thing would look like in the end. Roño has done so much more with so much less, and in this filmâs smallest, most simple moments, you can see that genius shine through. But we donât get to see that for most of the picture.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie was surprinsingly good. Great performances from both Maricel Soriano and the little girl and a really, really good plot. I had never heard of that kind of beings ( watch the movie to know what I'm talking about :p) and that's one of the main reasons I liked the movie.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This was incredibly splendid, knowing Ms. Maricel Soriano being the only diamond star, she'll never disappoint us with her acting skills,. Along with an exceptional director, a powerful and effective cast, engkanto's and rats creeping everywhere, and a story each of us can relate with..
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
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Audience Member
Too bad the ending was kinda crap.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/02/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie pales in comparison with its previous 2 predecessors (Feng Shui and Sukob). I guess Chito Roño's magic in horror films works only with Kris Aquino playing the lead role.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
Full Review
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