One thing is certain: director Bobby Bonifacio, Jr. comprehends stifling dread in the most profound sense. With a grief-soaked story of ancestral vulnerability (you can’t pick your relatives, can you?), his terrifying and startlingly confident, Numbalikdiwa (2006) proved as much. Bonifacio fidgets with that peculiar breathlessness once again throughout Kahalili (Viva Films, 2023), a cinematic sacrament that dances around a fruitless relationship in dizzying circles. But be prepared to feel equally suffocated (albeit, a chosen, cultish kind) all the same. In the midst of wide-open surroundings we may be, but Bonifacio still wants us to crave and kick for oxygen, perhaps in a less claustrophobic and more agoraphobic fashion. The tangible dread in Kahalili—oftentimes charged by tight choreography and atmospheric compositions—is so recognizably out of Numbalikdiwa that you'll immediately distinguish the connective headspace responsible for both tales. And yet, this psychedelic thriller is different by way of Bonifacio’s loosened thematic restraint. You won’t exactly feel lost while disemboweling Bonifacio’s inviting beast, this is also a fitting way to describe the location where most of the story unfolds. There is only a slack sense of yesterday and tomorrow in Bonifacio’s locale of choice where an endless string of hallucinatory traditions are exercised in broad daylight.
We follow Martha (Stephanie Raz), Bonifacio’s second fearless female lead after Meryll Soriano, playing a character marked by something unspeakable. In a deeply scarred, emotionally unrestricted performance—you might hear her screams in your nightmares, Martha isn’t on her own, she's with her self-absorbed longtime boyfriend Carlos (Victor Relosa, convincingly egotistical). When Martha arrives, a couple, Isabel (Millen Gal) and Rod (Sid Lucero) respectively, Bonifacio forgoes the aforesaid narrative economy for something sinister. The sneaky hex Bonifacio casts has that tight grip, on both the characters and the audience. Sex and death, a source of so much pain and anxiety are here as part of life's unending cycle. Kahalili is in no rush to solve its mysteries. The third act is full of surreal images of revelry and ritual sacrifice. The unburdened surplus of lengthy customs does overshadow some of the film’s potentially ripe avenues of interest. But the invigorating reward here is the ultimate sovereignty you will find in Martha, a surrogate for any woman who ever excused an inconsiderate male, rationalized his unkind words or thoughtless non-apologies. Raz knows it in the film's final shot. And you will know it too, so intensely that her freedom might just feel like therapy.
Sound Design: Armand de Guzman
Music: Emerzon Texon
Editors: Nelson Villamayor, Noah Tonga
Production Designers: Sigrid T. Polon, Junebert Cantilla
Director of Photography: Michael Hernree J. Babista
Screenplay: Juvy Galamiton
Directed By: Bobby Bonifacio, Jr.
