MMFF Movie Review
The Exorsis
Directed by Fifth Solomon
TO SPEND a few more minutes with my family this Christmas, I skipped the first hour of The Exorsis, a horror-comedy vehicle for the Gonzaga showbiz sisters. I arrived at the scene where a possessed Dani (played by younger Gonzaga, Alex) was concluding a dance (or rap) battle wearing the nightgown and scar makeup from The Exorcist, while Gina (played by the senior Gonzaga, Toni) looks on with horror. Trust me, I didn’t miss anything.
The story was easy to piece together from the next hour that I, unfortunately, did not miss. The girls had lost their parents, and as a result, the older sister had become more distant. The older sister has dreams of studying abroad in Australia, but has doubts about leaving her sister behind. The problem becomes more acutely felt when the younger sister is possessed by the spirit of a person who had died near their small grocery store. To exorcise the specter from the younger sister, they must solve the unfinished business left behind by the unholy spirit.
I could end it there, because it really doesn’t have much to go on with. I found myself laughing against my will at jokes about pussies, penises, and Piolo Pascual (screaming his name in a commercial was a step towards Toni’s initial stardom), but at not much else. The movie is styled as a parody of the memorable horror film The Exorcist (hence the makeup and the vomit), and the set and the costumes are understandably, blah. The one bit of brilliance was an observation by the local faith healer about how the older sister’s anger is akin to her sister’s possession, but how many possessed people do you actually know to make that maxim universal? As it is a film that stars real-life sisters, some scenes of sisterly love were shoehorned into the movie.
In their other ventures, the Gonzaga sisters work together when they dance to the same beat. When one sister spends a good part of two hours howling and being not quite herself while the other sister is doing something else, what’s the point? — Joseph L. Garcia
MTRCB Rating: PG
