"The Ghost Bride: Confusing as hell."

"The Ghost Bride: Confusing as hell."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Ever since my wife subscribed to Iflix I have been bombarded with filipino films while I am having lunch or dinner. Some are good  , then there is the Ghost Bride which makes me scratch my head.

Synopsis: In this story , Mayen (Kim Chiu) is offered a chance to elevate the status of her family from hard times by marrying a dead man. Seems easy enough at first but things turn ugly when the dead man is not really a dead man.  

The Good:

Learning some more chinese folk lore and culture is always great. The traditional theater form of Kao-ka for example and the knowledge that not everyone is in the rich range bracket when it comes to bein chinese in this country.AKA Mano po peoples.

Seeing Alice Dixson and Ina Raymundo in a movie is good too. 

The Bad:

Here we go. So Mayen looks chinese and all her siblings are chinese and then we have Ina Raymundo and Robert Sena as their parents. I mean why couldn't they just get normal chinese actors for this one? These guys are as moreno and morena as everyone else.

Mateo G-something also plays a chinese! That guy looks European/Italian as hell so how did he get this role anyway? 

The Ghosts in the story are confusing as well. You don't even know if they are protecting Mayen or scaring her. They seem to be casting Mayen as someone special even before she was propostitioned to be a Ghost Bride. So how did they know Mayen? How is it that she is special aside from the fact that she is easily susciptible to the proposition since her family needs money?

I guess we would never know.

Seeing Ina Raymundo as a Mom. It makes me feel old.

Hearing Alice Dixson and her confusing accent. She sounds like an old chinese commercial  , a stereotypical chinese and weirdly enough Visayan Chinese. So if that isn't confusing I don't know what is.

The Ugly:

Incest is Wincest said no one ever(And meant it) but in this movie it seems that Robert who is a cousin of Mayen is propositioning to marry his own cousin. And that is ugly on so many levels. Especially when your own cousin seems to want to put you in the friend zone.

All in All it was a total waste of time. The plot was dragging and seemed expensive at best. I hope they got their moneys worth in producing this.