Movie No. 67 (2013): THE HEALING

The Healing (2012)
Director: Chito S. Rono
Cast: Vilma Santos, Janice De Belen, Kim Chiu, Martin Del Rosario, Daria Ramirez, Joel Torre
In Tagalog (Filipino)

The film is okay. As a horror movie it delivers, although not in the way Rono's past horror flicks Feng Shui and Sukob did. 

Vilma Santos is Seth. Early in the film she is shown accompanying her father to a faith healer. Her father miraculously recovers from his post-stroke ailment. Then Seth's friends and neighbors, who have different ailments and having witnessed the recovery of her father, convince her to bring them to the same faith healer. Seth's son tags along, dragging his stepsister who has a chronic kidney condition that slowly poisons her blood. Everyone is healed. But in the coming days, they will meet a violent death, one by one. It feels like Final Destination or Feng Shui. The thrill of watching The Healing is in the waiting and seeing how one character will die because we all know already that they will die one after the other. And there's the requisite race against time because there's a way to stop all these violent deaths. Seth, of course, is the key.

The movie is entertaining (i.e., watchable) and with a decent script. But I notice some weak points of the movie: One: There seems to be color coding in some scenes which, in some cases, is distracting. Two:  I notice that the Seth character almost disappears because of Vilma Santos being a big name. You see her acting very well but still Seth disappears in some scenes and you see Vilma Santos instead. The rest of the cast are generally okay, too. Three: The movie looks like rehash of Feng Shui.

Rating: 2.5/4.0

Date seen: March 27, 2013