Basement is designed to be simple. It is about a bunch of people who accidentally get locked inside the basement parking of a mall. Soon, they discover that they are trapped in there with something monstrous. It’s a very basic, one location setup that ought to deliver straightforward thrills. But the film ends up going in too many directions, saddling thin characters with a variety of underdeveloped narrative threads. And in doing so, it ends up forgetting to be scary.
The film serves up a variety of characters. Pregnant Angela (Chynna Ortaleza) is there with her two children, who are yet to understand that their father isn’t coming back. Eliza (Sarah Lahbati) is there with Jules (Enzo Pineda). The two are having an illicit affair, but Eliza is starting to have second thoughts about it. Roxy (Louise delos Reyes) is hanging out with her bandmates, who kind of disgust her. Gay nurse Migs (Jan Manual) is stuck taking care of an elderly woman (Pilita Corales). Mario and Bernard (Kevin Santos and Betong Sumaya) are supposed to be making some sort of delivery, but get a flat tire.
There’s a lot going on there, and we haven’t even gotten to the really vague drug deal that sets off the action. The film overemphasizes backstory, making sure that we know exactly who these characters are and what they’re like before anything actually happens. It’s a pretty tedious way to go about things, especially since the film doesn’t actually leverage any of this backstory. Does it really matter in the end that Jules was cheating on his wife? Did it matter that Migs was gay, and hit on every man he encountered?
All of that extra detail just distracted from the immediacy of the action. Not that the action is particularly good. The movie is heavily reliant on visual effects, and a lot of it just isn’t very good. The limitations are made fairly obvious. There are a bunch of characters staring off into space, supposedly seeing something horrific. And the physical space itself just isn’t very well defined. There is one great sequence in all this, an absurd little chase that provides a truly compelling visual. But for the most part, the movie is just a big mess.
The acting is all very broad. It feels like the actors were instructed to choose one note and play it as loud as they possibly can. It might be a function of the writing, which is so intent on driving home singular character traits. Teejay Marquez, for example, just stops short of literally drooling as he plays a perverted character. Betong Sumaya mugs heavily to hit every punchline. There’s just nobody in this cast that’s allowed any nuance, and it really gets exhausting.
Basement doesn’t even hold together as a single narrative by the end. The start and end points don’t really match up, the film unable to show the logical passage of time. It almost feels like the film forgot which narrative device it had used in the start. The film as a whole is a real chore. It doesn’t have any forward momentum, the characters fumbling through this story with no clear idea of where they’re going or what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re all just buried in their backstories, hoping in their heads that their issues will somehow be resolved.
My Rating:
