Liwanag sa Dilim is a coming-of-age adventure movie. It features a bunch of good kids dealing with forces beyond their ken, all while dealing with the tumultuous experience of teenage development. It’s a smart place to start, the movie building off the established structure of a genre of film we don’t get nearly enough of these days. But then the film goes on, and it just loses sight of what it wants to be. It gets caught up in the machinations of a plot that just doesn’t make any sense.
Niko (Jake Vargas) is the kind of kid that picks fights with bullies at the arcade. His mom brings him to his grandfather's house in the small provincial town of Estancia, hoping to keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately, Estancia happens to be right in the middle of trouble, with several of its young residents having disappeared. Niko, along with a couple of new friends, stumbles into the truth behind these disappearances. And through this discovery, he learns of the secret history of his family, and a mystical responsibility.
The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The initiating event of the film is Niko encountering a mysterious woman in town. For no real reason whatsoever, he decides to follow her one day, and he happens to witness her doing something terrible. He takes a video of it, and the film then spends a good chunk of its time spinning its wheels. When Niko should be reporting what he's recorded, he instead tells his friends to keep it secret. Apparently, he wants to confirm what is already in the video, whatever that means.
And so the film goes on, the various characters shown clear proof of wrongdoing, but then doing nothing about it. And then it never really feels like the main characters are in danger. The film’s threat spends most of its time dealing with characters that we don’t really care about. Most of the time, they’re just random extras that pop up just to die. There isn’t really any tension in that regard. More interesting is the film’s attempt at depicting the home lives of its teenage characters. They’re all facing their own issues, and the heart of the film lies with them confronting those problems head on.
I suppose the horror element is meant to be a metaphor for their struggle, but it’s the part that just refuses to work. The film does eventually get kind of fun, but the road getting there just isn’t worth it. The film just wastes so much time doing nothing when it could be having its main characters actively trying to do something to better their situation. The three young actors at the center of this film are all right, though their performances skew a little towards TV. But they really do come alive in the action sequences, where within limits, they manage to show off an enthusiasm missing from the rest of the picture.
There are certainly good ideas in Liwanag sa Dilim. One can sense the intention behind all the action, with the characters’ coming-of-age coinciding with their battle against the forces of evil. But the screenplay just doesn’t add up. So much of this movie is concerned with this stupid video, with characters apparently mystified by the technology, unable to come to grips with things that are right in front of them. One runs of patience well before the film actually gets to the point.
My Rating:
