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Di Ingon ’Nato
English Title: Not Like Us
Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2011
Directors & Screenwriters: Brandon Relucio & Ivan Zaldarriaga
Producer: Cinema One Originals
Cast: Rez Cortez, Franco Reyes, Mercedes Cabral, Donna Gimeno, Jeffrey Ogario, Gabriel Jon Abanto, Gregg Tecson, Marlon Hofer, Bernard Catindig, Aya Ng, Nathaniel Rubio, Cara Muaña Rosende, Ria Araneta, Lito Cardeño, Daday Melgar, Joe Monteño, Ligaya Rabago, Vingenr Tan, Lord Padua, Diane, Mata, Rita Sabal, Ronyel Compra, Dodong, Fatima Padua, Aurora Pacure
Lauro, the captain of a remote barangay or village in Cebu Province, is alerted by some of his constituents to a deadly infectious outbreak, tracked from mysterious instances of residents or outsiders getting killed in apparently violent ways. His daughter, who works as medic in the barangay health center, is able to determine that the diseased return to life after they die and acquire a hankering for human flesh. A priest and a pagan healer contend in having the right explanation (and consequent solution) for the phenomenon, but their use of magic doesn’t stop the illness from spreading. In a parallel development, Istoy, a farmer, sees one such hacked-up body. When his wife is attacked by a neighbor, he uses his bolo to kill the assailant. His wife worries that he committed a crime, but he becomes more anxious when her condition rapidly deteriorates.
The zombie-apocalypse subgenre is so overfamiliar that one could already predict how its elements of contagion and consequent social breakdown could function in any sample. But Di Ingon ’Nato’s impoverished agricultural context provides a resonance that compatriots and invaders alike might do well to learn from: “Filipino farmers hacking the undead,” as co-director Ivan Zaldarriega half-jokingly stated in a journal interview with genre specialist Andrew Leavold. Beyond the admittedly distressing representation of the repressed, historical incidents after the film’s release added retrospective value on stations both national (the practice of extrajudicial killings during the authoritarian regime of a Visayan President) and international (the intensification of the global Covid-19 pandemic). A narrative that turns on unstoppable contagion that results in widespread and arbitrary casualties would be hampered by severely constricted budgetary resources, a problem that Di Ingon ’Nato, alongside countless other indie productions, confronted. The filmmakers atypically resolved this quandary by taking advantage of their limitations: minimizing the casting of professional performers, shooting in remote locales, apportioning the use of gore in judiciously effective closeups, furnishing sound effects for subtle and well-timed blasts. Along with a few careful strokes at character development, the effect curiously results in an embrace of the monstrous—more pronounced than in the usual zombie-apocalypse outing. With the possibly permanent loss of what may be Philippine cinema’s supreme zombie film, Celso Ad. Castillo’s Kung Bakit Dugo ang Kulay ng Gabi (Night of the Zombies, 1973), Di Ingon ’Nato compensates satisfactorily enough; the fact that both are set in rural locales, as are several other horror entries in this list, could have made for productive analysis if the Castillo film could be recovered and considered as the others’ predecessor.
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