Directors Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes return to one of their most iconic stories in T’yanak. This new film still takes a lot of elements from the original movie, but it turns them into something completely different. It is a surprisingly powerful family drama that just happens to have a monster baby at its center. The film, while still heavily committed to the sensibilities of the monster movie, finds the emotional and psychological core of the story and raises it to new dramatic heights.
While out running one day, Madie (Solenn Heussaff) witnesses a grisly scene: Joeben (Sid Lucero), covered in blood, cradling the head of his wife in his arms. She investigates further, and she finds a baby alone inside a cave. With nothing else to go on, she brings the baby to the safety of the home of her future in-laws, where she's staying while she plans her wedding with her fiancée Mark (Tom Rodriguez). Mark's sister Julie (Judy Ann Santos) takes a shining to the baby, and takes it upon herself to care for it. But this is no ordinary baby boy.
This film eschews many of the conventions of modern horror. It doesn't really hide anything from the audience, the script foregoing the perceived need for some kind of narrative twist. It doesn't try to startle the audience, its scares relying more on conceptual terror. There is violence in the movie, but the overt killing of people isn’t what’s scary. The film builds something more terrifying in the uncertainty over what these characters are going to do. It is in this dramatic space that the film functions, as it pushes its characters to extremes that test the very core of their humanity.
The titular monster is powerful not because it can kill people, but because it comes in the guise of an innocent child. And the film really builds its plot around that, the characters taking a journey into the darkness as they are forced to consider the killing of what appears to be a baby. This arc is made all the more compelling by the various conflicts being played out within this community. The screenplay quickly establishes the dynamics of these characters, the history between each of them laid out in fairly elegant fashion. The film feels situated in this locale, the interactions between the various sectors feeling grounded and familiar.
The production wisely uses digital effects sparingly. The T’yanak itself isn’t the most sophisticated effect, but it feels just right. The film often has to shoot around the monster to make its attacks look credible, but it all looks okay. Judy Ann Santos is key to the film’s appeal. As Julie, she makes the obsession clear, but she never makes it feel unreasonable. She conveys a history of pain and loneliness that makes her choices understandable if not completely sane. Solenn Heussaff plays the outsider well, the actress serving as a fine surrogate for the audience.
T’yanak is just a perfect little movie. Gallaga and Reyes step up their technical game, delivering a series of really impressive sequences. But it all comes down to the drama. The film embraces the B-movie sensibilities and then elevates all that to a really emotional place. It just treats the monster so seriously, carefully considering the emotions that might be involved in dealing with such a threat. As silly as it might seem in your head, the film just presses on and builds to something genuinely affecting by the end.
My Rating:
