Welcome to What to Watch Right Now, our weekly rundown of the best things to watch right now. The constant stream of shows, videos, and films to watch online can become a sludge to wade through, so here are a few things you can watch courtesy of the Rolling Stone Philippines team. Whether it’s a new film, a video essay, or even a home video release you should own (physical media is now available!), we hope it can ease the burden of choosing which streaming platform to use or of discovering a new cinematic odyssey.
This week, KMJS’ Gabi ng Lagim: The Movie reminded us just how important it is to watch horror from the comfort of a dark cinema. The first volume of Stranger Things’ final season pulled us back into the Upside Down, and we can barely wait for its final episodes to drop later this December. Over the Garden Wall offers a cozier kind of horror. Sirāt is a survival story set against the backdrop of a desert rave. And, with this year’s QCinema International Film Festival, we highlight some standout films from its impressive lineup.
‘Stranger Things’ Season 5, Volume 1
The Party returns, but can they wrap up almost 10 years of character arcs, boss battles, and 80s nostalgia in just one season?
While the first volume of Stranger Things’ final season isn’t perfect — the cast barely looks like teenagers anymore, and I’m noticing a few re-hashed narrative arcs — it definitely does a great job of pulling at our nostalgic heartstrings and setting things up for the final four episodes, to be released come Christmastime and New Year. Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) has returned a year and a half after wreaking havoc on Hawkins, and the members of the Party (including adults) must band together to put an end to him once and for all.
Some of the gore of previous seasons has returned (watch out for a nasty home invasion in the second episode), and the grossness of the Upside Down has been cranked up a few notches (see the pulsing wall of flesh). But for those looking to see the kids acting like their usual, nerdy selves, refer to the entire Party booby-trapping a house together à la Home Alone, Robin (Maya Hawke) and Steve (Joe Keery) trying to be radio jockeys, and Erica (Priah Ferguson) being a menace to her older brother, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin). — Mel Wang
‘Over the Garden Wall’
A cozy, November watch, with just the right amount of spooks
A story about two brothers lost in the woods and hunted by a soul-hungry forest demon called The Beast might not seem like the most obvious choice for a comfort show; however, show creator Patrick McHale seemed to figure out how to balance the charm of his endearing animated miniseries with the creeping dread of a folktale long forgotten. It follows brothers Wirt (Elijah Wood) and Gregory (Collin Dean) who meet a variety of strange, but charming, characters (look out for the pumpkins at Pottsfield, the Highway Man by the Tavern, and the singing frogs on the Riverboat) in order to find their way out of the forest. Guiding them on their journey is a talking bluebird named Beatrice (Melanie Lynskey) who, despite the Dante reference, is not the best of guides. —Mel Wang
‘KMJS’ Gabi ng Lagim: The Movie’
A mixed bag, but still delivers good scares
Judging by the success of The Conjuring: Last Rites this year and the packed theater where I saw KMJS’ Gabi ng Lagim: The Movie last night, Pinoys still do love a good scare. While avid Gabi ng Lagim fans may have already binged years’ worth of KMJS’ annual Undas specials, the film takes this to a whole new level.
For one, there’s the viewing experience: a darkened theater, ideally at night, with a community of people looking to be scared. Second, the storytelling and VFX are punched up. No more voice-overs and talking heads, just straight-up horror shorts that may or may not meet your expectations. Our Rolling Stone Hall of Fame inductee, Jessica Soho, still introduces the segments, providing a short context for the films we are about to watch. The show has always championed the filmmakers helming the reenactments of the true-to-life horror stories, but in Gabi ng Lagim: The Movie, directors Yam Laranas, Dodo Dayao, and King Mark Baco take full charge. The two segments that impressed me the most are Laranas’s and Dayao’s, although Baco’s ‘Sanib’ has a great shot that terrified me the most.
Laranas’ ‘Pocong’ takes us to sea, with the titular entity terrifying Mark (Miguel Tanfelix, in a standout performance), leaving him guessing whether the harbinger of death is out to get him or someone he holds dear. ‘Pocong’ is easily the best of the segments when it comes to scares, especially with the pocong lore (with its rotting face) and the eerie setting of the ship combining for a haunting film.
Dayao’s ‘Berbalang’ is the most fun of the three. Dayao clearly had a good time making his tropical western, utilizing the film’s best ensemble — Elijah Canlas, Sanya Lopez, Rocco Nacino, Mikoy Morales, Joel Saracho, and Charles Aaron Salazar (in full prosthetics) — to craft a humanizing take on an aswang variant. The myth of the berbalang allows for both a family tale and a searing parable about authority. ‘Berbalang’ also hews closest to an oral tale about the titular creature, making for a great callback to the oft-told stories that scare us silly. —Don Jaucian
QCinema Honorable Mentions
The annual film festival brought a range of Cannes picks, new Filipino releases, and Hollywood features to several of Quezon City’s screens
This year’s QCinema International Film Festival did not disappoint, bringing a strong lineup of films from the Philippines and around the world.
Diamonds in the Sand, whose director Janus Victoria took home the Asian Next Wave Award for Best Screenplay, was a moving Philippines-Japan-Malaysia co-production centered on one man’s (Lily Franky of Shoplifters) loneliness and his choice to walk away from it. A Useful Ghost, this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week grand prix winner, was deemed the Asian Next Wave Best Picture for its absurd but emotional story about a dead wife’s ghost possessing a vacuum cleaner in an attempt to be with her living husband.
Honey, My Love, So Sweet, directed by Filipino filmmaker JT Trinidad, is a tender look at a young, queer child falling in love, earning it the title of Best Short Film at the festival. And, especially for Paul Mescal fans, both Hamnet and The History of Sound were part of QCinema’s lineup, offering audiences the chance to see two strikingly different, but nonetheless heartbreaking, romances play out on the big screen. — Mel Wang
‘Sirāt’
Dancing with life and death in the middle of a rave dessert
Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt opens with a father and his young son wandering into a rave on the edge of Morocco. He is searching for his daughter, but he looks just as adrift as the crowd around him. The scenes pull you in with their throb of electronic music and the sight of bodies moving freely in clothes that feel like the opposite of anything a parent would approve of.
The film first reads like a portrait of a group, with the rave at its centerpiece, a place where misfits and runaways build their own rules. Then the tone fractures. “Sirāt” shifts into a survival story that strips the desert of romance and turns the father’s search into something sharper and more dangerous. What begins as a road movie becomes a tense look at how far people go when the world they reject starts pushing back. —Elijah Pareño
