Watch out for forests in the Philippines, for they hide a creature or two you wouldn't want to meet. Based on the Tambal folklore, “Belief is the Light in Darkness” tells the story of one of the most feared local mythical creatures – a shapeshifting evil being that lures its victims deep into the woods for the purpose of possessing their bodies and melting into their hosts' families.
“Belief is the Light in Darkness” is screening at Across Asia Film Festival
On his way back home through the forest, a teenager (Dylan Ray Talon) meets a group of ghosts of disappeared villagers. Although they don't speak, it seems like they want to deliver a message to the boy. When he informs his father (Soliman Cruz) about the strange encounter in the woods, the man is quick on his feet to go and check whether the story is true or not. He won't become aware of the ghosts who appear to be invisible to him, but into a much scarier group of living, threatening men who are not up to anything good. The job done on their masks is short of perfect, and the icy stares the man has to put up with have more warning signs than the invisible presence of Tambal.
Francis Guillermo has shot this spooky, atmospheric short horror film (with his DP Rocket Ruiz) during his final year of studies, based on his own script that is not only inspired by the local beliefs, but also by the Spanish colonial history and the martial law by the former Filipino dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos which made many people disappear without a trace. In his surprisingly accomplished debut, with the hair-raising original soundtrack and sound design by Francis Guillermo himself, he makes a political comment through the genre format. “Belief is the Light in Darkness” is also an outcry against brutal killings committed during Rodrigo Duterte's drug war, called “Large-scale murdering enterprise” by Amnesty International. In Francis Guillermo's filmic vision, the wood become a symbolic home to many wandering souls who lost their lives to different oppressors, and the way he executed it on screen shows a great talent in compressing a very complex story into 14' of rounded narrative.
