Cinemalaya Review: 'Mag-iina' balances horror, wit, and political bite
Guelan Luarca and Giancarlo Abrahan transform a dysfunctional household into a potent metaphor for abuse, inheritance and a nation trapped in cycles of violence.
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Guelan Luarca and Giancarlo Abrahan transform a dysfunctional household into a potent metaphor for abuse, inheritance and a nation trapped in cycles of violence.
Playwright Guelan Luarca’s unsettling script finds an equally astute visual language in Giancarlo Abrahan’s direction, turning Mag-iina into a disturbing yet absorbing work that understands precisely when to unsettle and when to land a comedic beat. Where some films settle for disturbance without substance, Mag-iina packs its horror with metaphors, wit and political commentary, creating a perfect balance between entertainment and urgency.
The film’s relevance feels immediate in a Philippines still caught in cycles of abuse. Abrahan and Luarca ingeniously place the audience inside an old family house that increasingly resembles a horror chamber or an asylum, yet remains sufficiently recognizable for its family dynamics, values and history to register.
Janine Gutierrez plays an estranged daughter carrying generational trauma who is forced by circumstance to return to the family home with her cousin (Cherie Pie Picache). There, they reunite with her mother (Agot Isidro) and formidable grandmother (Jackie Lou Blanco), who have long lived in the house. A revered National Artist, the matriarch’s public stature sharply contrasts with the darkness within the household.
The house becomes a potent metaphor for entrapment. Blood, milk, consumption and confinement recur as images of inheritance and complicity. There is a disturbing paradox at its center — why remain inside when escape seems possible, and why does nobody truly want to leave? In this sense, Mag-iina evokes a nation caught in its own form of Stockholm syndrome, trapped within cycles it knows to be abusive.
Luarca’s theatrical sensibility is evident in the dialogue, which carries wit, humor and menace in equal measure. The film’s horror does not rely solely on conventional scares but emerges from the grotesque familiarity of its relationships. Violence simmers beneath nearly every exchange, while the family’s artistic and creative identity adds another layer to their particular kind of dysfunction.
The ensemble is excellent, from Gutierrez and Nessa Roque to a deliciously sinister Jackie Lou Blanco, whose warped expressions and chilling lines make her presence particularly memorable. Gutierrez, meanwhile, wisely avoids making her character a conventional heroine: she carries her own fractures and troubling impulses, making her as complicated as the family she resists.
One major narrative question remains: what happens to Isidro’s character after a significant incident? The script appears to leave her behind, almost as if the family itself has forgotten what happened. On the other hand, that omission can also be interpreted as troubling because it points toward just how terrifyingly capable these people are of forgetting, absorbing and normalizing violence.
Mag-iina may be called horror, but it belongs to a more unsettling category — one in which the most frightening elements are not supernatural at all. Its monsters live inside the house, and its metaphors point unmistakably toward the world outside it.
