Demons

While her parents dance, recite poetry and seethe with passion, nine-year old Nena is brought up by a superstitious nanny who warns her against the demons in the jungle around their mansion on the Philippine island of Necros. From that moment on, the girl is plagued by nightmares about pitch-black demons who cover her with earth and give her the plague. The real demons are both the soldiers of Marcos – the first part of the film is set in 1983 – who murder and plunder their way through the jungle, and the bandits who pretend to be revolutionaries and rob people of their money. The poor young fisherman José attracts Nena’s attention. She helps him with food and clothes, but he is too shy to talk to her. When Nena has grown up and become a militant, intellectual young woman, Nena and José fall in love after all. Not the obvious social differences, but the demons in the jungle stand in the way of their love. Demons is a film that successfully manages to link romantic elements (the film is also an ode to Filipino poetry) to shocking documentary footage (archive material from the Marcos era) and that manages to link the realistic way in which political abuses are tackled to style elements from the horror/fantasy genre. One of the best and most original Filipino films of recent years. (NV)