“Mallari” attempts for a certain kind of innovation with a narrative structure freshly lifted off anime-like, parallel-world, time-travel story telling. Leveraging in the fantastic, three generations of stories overlap one another convincingly to tell a ghost story that haunts the titular family for decades. But all of these attempts at novelty to reimagine the lore of a historically documented serial killer from the colonial Philippines? The film seems to be capturing through its creativity an attitude as old as its narrative itself.
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The marvel of Mallari’s technical achievements cannot be ignored. Derrick Cabrido’s years of handling horror films is matched by Enrico Santos’ veteran penmanship and Pao Orendain’s textured images that shape the scenes with enough darkness to fill the scares. Santos’ script in particular exhibits a really good pulse in pacing sequences. Their attempt to introduce the multi-layered story-telling comes off smoothly.
Taking inspiration from the infamous friar-serial killer from 19th century Spanish-occupied Philippines, Juan Severino Mallari, generations of relatives are imagined across history: Johnrey Mallari, a collaborator of the American colonizers in the 1940s as a newsreel filmmaker, and Jonathan Mallari de Dios, a heart surgeon from the present day looking for a cure for his ailing fiancee, Agnes (Janella Salvador). The three men from the Mallari family are all performed by seasoned screen hero, Piolo Pascual, who fulfills his performances with just enough nuance to differentiate each.
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But having all-veterans on board does not mean that the film will not fumble. “Mallari”’s attempts for formal novelty often gets betrayed by old habits of ghost-face jumpscares and telenovela dialogue exchanges. The complexity of the structure is mostly supported by simplistic line delivery and situations that makes the supposed innovation a mere device that veils the conventional. The three generations, after all, only ever interact meaningfully for narrative exposition to progress Jonathan’s journey for the cure.
It is all fitting, if we consider the film as thematically addressing traditions, or rather returning to it, and such resurgence does not happen without any resistance. Jonathan the surgeon, a supposed man of science, searches for what he’s looking for in folk medicine. Johnrey the documentarist does not believe his colonizer handlers despite telling him that the “aswang” tale he’s following is just part of CIA’s Edward Landsdale’s psychological operations. Juan Severino, the Catholic priest, a religion from the colonizers, being forced into his horrendous acts by the threat of an indigenous witchcraft.
The men from all three generations seem to be forced into taking action. At the heart of “Mallari” is an attitude that can be found in Philippine cinema that exposes a certain kind of positionality in history. The Mallari family here is presented as a tormented elite that is up against the working class as the avatar of pure evil. This torment forced the men of the clan, according to this alternate history being presented, to do evil outside of their own will, else their family will suffer worse than their victims. This trope of the elite families unironically suffering in fiction, scarred to gain sympathy, has been present from the Ojeda Family in Peque Gallaga’s “Oro Plata Mata” (1982) to the Marcoses in Darryl Yap’s “Maid in Malacanang” (2021).
In “Mallari”, however, this trope can easily be hinted at and discussed considering how the movie tries to situate this within the history of feudalism and colonialism that each generation of the tormented family has been through. The film is, however, mistaken to treat both history as discontinuous to benefit the focus on Jonathan’s mission. The confrontation where Lucas (JC Santos), a church deacon coming from the long line of servants of the Mallari family, berates Jonathan of his elitist attitude towards him which would have made a heavy and effective point to explicitly paint the present portion of historical continuity. But this sentiment however is already painted with suspicion, considering what has been exposed before that point. In effect, every aspect to historicize the film is forlorn by its attempt to salvage the bourgeoisie in distress.
The film’s attitude towards history, perhaps, makes “Mallari” an interesting film to situate in contemporary Philippines. The extent that we can consider the film as an argument to take a different look even at the most horrible people that have ever existed makes historical revision an intriguing excuse for a fictional goal. The fantastic elements perhaps may lessen the seriousness one could pour into the material while watching it. But the technical polish makes the sentiment seem valid, sellable, and believable to those the film meant to scare.
