PodBill Just what I expected

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Stephen Abell If you're like me and enjoy a good movie, no matter what the language, then you should check out this Filipino gem.What this film gives the audience is a story in three very different acts.The first act is the present day where three friends "borrow" a car to go joy riding. Though their version of joyriding isn't creating havoc on the road but to actually practise their driving. While they're tootling around the town they see a police car and decide to try and find a quieter section of town. They come across a fenced off lane and think it would be a good place to improve their driving skills. However, it's not long before they find themselves in some scary and creepy situations. The director Yam Laranas does a fantastic job of creating an eerie atmosphere, using shadows and light to their fullest. The only thing I found annoying with the film was in this act... the girls really can scream... you need to turn the volume down before all the glass in your house explodes...The second act starts to tell of the events that have led up to the present day events. We travel back in time a couple of years to when two sisters disappear while travelling the road. Adding to the creepiness of the earlier act the story now adds a dark and ominous feel as things become dangerous and deadly for the sisters.The third act goes back twelve years to the very beginning and shows the psychological effects that a dysfunctional family in turmoil can experience, especially if one of the family is mentally unstable. This is one of the strongest sections of the film as it resolves the mysterious parts of the story. Laranas does a brilliant job of building atmosphere, once again. This time he uses brightness and shadows to convey feeling. Add the great acting of Carmina Villaroel who plays Carmela, a strong controlling independent woman caught in a loveless marriage due to having a child, a woman who runs hot and cold at the flick of a switch.All of this makes the story much more interesting. The writers, Aloy Adlawan and Yam Laranas, easily blend the styles and intricacies into a strong and believable story that spread through the horror, thriller, psychological, and crime genres.I would recommend this to all horror lovers and even to fans of thrillers, who wouldn't usually watch a horror movie. This film really does work on so many levels.

Disney Wizard A top-drawer script can be ruined by a poor director but no amount of top-drawer direction can improve a rotten script - I want my one-hundred-and-ten minutes back from this schmutz used to cover the porn hidden under the socks. This epic-fail is almost better than I could create in a weekend with some teenagers, an outline and a handy-cam with broken steady-shot because if it were well trimmed and tightly cut there would only be enough story to fill a quarter-hour. The plot is… is a decorated rogue cop who…, who…, oh yeah, there's no plot. The open-caption narrative subtitling in English throughout distracts even native Tagalog viewers, because the subtitling delivers the lines better than the actors. Schizophrenic hallucination transference (I must assume,) and the supernatural aren't enough undelivered explanation to fill the Kaybiang Tunnel sized plot-holes in this intentionally confusing yawner best screened in a theater for an air-conditioned nap. It's too easy to fall asleep trying to watch this pablum schlok, but there is no plot to miss should you do, it put the focus-puller to sleep over and over again. Low budget is no excuse for not employing a competent continuity script-girl, but apparently the fuzzy forms which vanish and re-appear among scene cuts and frame edges is. A tip to the viewer resulting from four frustrated attempts at genuinely trying to stay awake and stick with it - I was finally able watch it through to the credits, in fast forward. In FF you'll miss no story because the dialog is built into the open-captions, you'll not miss the easily forgettable laboriously long-drawn-out score and much of the film will return to normal speed. Here's a tip for Yam Laranas - Minutes do not manufacture mystery. Creeping a film along does not a creepy film make. If you're stuck with a thin script of kiddie-pool-shallow characters which is stretched several minutes between lines by vacuously empty repetitive images, don't liberally sprinkle your all-filler/no-killer film with over-crank and slow-motion to substitute for genuine tension or thrilling excitement. We want the killer, not the filler!

Paul Magne Haakonsen "The Road" is an odd mix of crime, horror and drama, with an end result that is actually worth watching. However, it is not one of the best movies I have seen, nor is it one of the worst. The movie is fairly average, but it does have some pretty interesting moments here and there.What I enjoyed about the movie was that the movie backtracked, taking us backward in time to the things leading up to the things that happened in the beginning of the movie. That was a pretty good move on director Yam Laranas behalf - sort of like the way the Korean movie "Peppermint Candy" was built up, and it worked out quite nicely for the overall flow of the movie.As for being a Tagalog (Philippine) horror movie, well then I must say that I didn't find the movie overly scary, but then again I am not really familiar with Tagalog movies, so I don't really have anything to compare this with. However, compared to the many Korean and Japanese horror movies, this was like a picnic in the park."The Road" does have some interesting moments, as I mentioned above. Aside from not being scary, the movie does a great job at building up some suspense and an even better job at taking us back in time and showing us the things that lead up to the events in the start of the movie. There is so really interesting character's and portrayal of these characters. Personally, I enjoyed the 1988 segment the most, because it was the most interesting of all the segments, and it was the one that really had the best of acting performances as well. Plus it was initially the foundation of the previous segments of the movie.For a Westerner, then this movie didn't really offer much in the scare department, but the movie is worth watching because of the interesting story and the approach that the director had taken with it. And on the plus side, it was nice to have an Asian horror movie that didn't focus on a ghostly woman in a white dress with long, black hair covering her face.

ezrahi MANILA STANDARD: Isah V. RedIf Sigaw and Echo were about a haunted apartment, what is The Road all about?Laranas explores the idea of terror in this sleek horror-thriller. No, there are no supernatural creatures that terrorize the other characters in the story, there is just a crime that for many years has not been solved, and the perpetrator is still on the loose.The police is baffled. So is the father of the character played by Tween star Barbie Forteza after receiving a call from her in the middle of the night asking for help.Even the audience is confounded as Forteza disappears from the screen after nearly 25 them endlessly. She is with Derrick Monasterio and Lexie Fernandez who spirited the car without permission for a good time.When Derrick and Lexie die in terror, the action shifts to Rhian Ramos and Louise de los Reyes in car that breaks down in the middle of the road. This is in a different era and Laranas wants us to take a closer look as this can provide us a clue on what happened to Monasterio, Fernandez, and Forteza.The sisters see a man walking and ask him if he could help them with their car. Without saying much, he leads them to a house. As soon as the two girls are in the house, they are subjected to a mind-boggling and terrifying torture. Richards seem to be a docile man, but inwardly he is sick and wanted to inflict pain on his victims.Again, this baffles us because there seems to be no direct connection to the previous scenes with the three younger actors.Yet, we suspect something, this could be the ghosts that haunt the road, but why?Laranas takes us to an even earlier time, at home, with a strange family. A kid, played by Renz Valerio, wonders why her mother, Carmina Villarroel, forbids her to talk to strangers, even to the laundrywoman, Yna Asistio. As punishment for even trying to connect to her, she is locked in a closet. Valerios's father, Marvin Agustin, tries to talk to Villarroel about not being to hard on their son, but to no avail. What happens after adds even more to the baffling issue of how are this connected to the three.When finally, Laranas takes us back to the present, we are able to breathe in relief. Forteza finally finds herself again, and the police wonder how she was able to be in the place,Oh, there's one character we failed to mention, that of TJ Trinidad, a policeman helping in the investigation of the crime. What he does to his fellow policeman at the end of the movie answered the question. No, Laranas isn't interested in a police story, he is interested in how people behave in terror.The Road is perhaps the first local movie I've seen in years that I didn't feel the urge to go out of the theater after the first 15 minutes. I would have if I wanted to, but something was telling me to stay so I can find out what the terror was all about. Is it a ghost, a creature, or is it all in the mind of Forteza, Fernandez, and Monasterio. But Fernandez and Monasterio have died, so it leaves Forteza to tell the story, but can she?Forteza surprises us with an honest performance. No, she's not the tween star we see on TV, but more of the young actress that delivers the kind of performance serious critics should notice. She reminds us of Dakota Fanning in her younger years starring in terrifying thriller Hide and Seek with Robert DeNiro.While the role is not lengthy enough to show more of what Forteza can do, I think it's enough that directors like Laranas is able to see beyond the 'tween stars sweet-young girl image.Alden Richards is in my opinion the biggest revelation in the movie. With nary a dialogue, he is able to imprint his character on the audience's memory bits as the disturbed murderous teen who tortures to death Rhian Ramos and Louise de los Reyes.Richards, in creating this character, makes a prototype for other actors who are dreaming of portraying a significantly different character.Yet, the actor that makes a big mark for us is the young boy played by Renz Valerio. Physically abused by his mother (Villarroel) and unable to be protected by his preacher-father (Agustin) we empathize with the young boy's confusion and inability to discern love from punishment. He is also unable to tell his father of his mother's infidelity lest he upsets her. And even after her death, he can still see her unaware of what his father did to her.It seems Laranas wrote the policeman role for TJ Trinidad. And he delivers exactly the kind of performance that I like in movies. With no frills but more substance, Trinidad's menacing character is hooded by his good looks and we are left with no inkling of what he is really made of and what he can do until the last minutes of the film.Laranas, apparently has picked up many things about filmmaking while making The Echo. He is now able to tell a story without too much bending to the whims of producers who want movies to be really so damn sophomoric you'd want to puke at th end. Here's a film that explores the Gothic and thriller genres, fusing them to make a really terrifying experience for the audience. This is way too ahead not by just a mile but by millions of miles of other local films shown in theaters.