In English and Tagalog with English and Chinese subtitles
Genre: Psychological Suspense Thriller
Director: Chito S. Roño
Starring: Kris Aquino and Claudine Barretto
RunTime: 1 hr 41 mins
Released By: GV
Rating: TBA
Official Website: http://www.sukobthemovie.com/

Opening Day: 28 September 2006

Synopsis:

Sandy and Dale are busy preparing for their wedding. Upon reaching her home, Sandy learns from her mother what happened to her friend, Helen.

It occurrs shortly after Helen’s father died, Helen proceeds with her wedding. She did not believe in the curse of the “sukob” – the wedding curse. It translates that misfortune will follow you if your wedding falls on the same year that a family member died or one of your siblings got married. A few weeks after the wedding, Helen’s husband dies in a plane crash. As Helen goes to the crash site, she dies in a bus accident. A few weeks later, Helen’s mother suddenly disappears inside her house. Their bodies have never been recovered.

Sandy continues with her own wedding. During the ceremony, she suffers from nosebleed and starts seeing glimpses of a ghostly flower girl. It turns out that she is not the only one who sees it. Her niece Joya, who is a psychic, is able to see the flower girl too.

Following that, Sandy’s relatives and friends meet with several accidents, but their bodies could not be found. Things become more mysterious when Sandy receives her respective wedding photos. The people who appear headless inside the photos are bound to die.

Joya tells Sandy that she is cursed by the “sukob”, just like Helen. However, no one in Sandy’s family passed away, and her siblings have been married years ago. In search of an end to the curse, Sandy discovers a dark family secret and she might not be able to give what the “sukob” is asking her to sacrifice

Movie Review:

Director Chito S. Rono, who was responsible for the other well-received Filipino horror flick, Feng Shui, weaves another story around a traditional superstition and some very unfortunate people. Sukob is the “highest grossing Filipino film of all time” for a reason. It hits all the right notes while sacrificing some reason, something that horror moviegoers live with all the time.

Sukob is okay-scary, borrowing fright ideas liberally from the Asian horror genre. However, the strength of Sukob lies in its soap opera story that contains enough subplots for a drama series. There is the scary ghost, a philandering father, two long-lost sisters, one evil mother-in-law and about three stories of tragic love. Claudine Barretto and Maya Salvador provide the eye candy while Wendell Ramos really looks like Brendan Fraser. However, much credit should go to Kris Aquino for carrying the show. Beautiful in a plump sort of way, she is the very sort of leading lady that audiences can feel and root for. In addition, Ronaldo Valdez deserves special mention here for stealing some of her thunder in the guilty father role.

In the final analysis, Sukob may be a horror film but it is really carried by a busy script that bulldozes over its own implausibility with plenty of distractions. With a few moments of lucid humor thrown into the mix, it just manages to hold on to the attention of the audience to the final scene.

Movie Rating:



(Sukob is the Filipino version of our very own The Maid but with better acting.)

Review by Lim Mun Pong