Hukluban brings enchantment to FDCP horror fest

MANILA, Philippines - Horror and enchantment intertwine in Hukluban, director Gil Portes’ entry to the upcoming Sineng Pambansa Horror Plus Film Festival 2014 organized by the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP).

A gothic horror romance that joins three other works from veteran filmmakers, the film is the 39th feature film in the long and distinguished career of the award-winning independent filmmaker known for such memorable films as Miss X, Merika, Mulanay, Saranggola and Mga Munting Tinig.

Although its premise is loosely based on his 1983 drama thriller Gabi Kung Sumikat Ang Araw, Hukluban is direk Gil’s first foray into the horror genre. However, that distinction needs clarification in the same way that the FDCP explained why the festival itself is called Horror Plus.

“All the films feature Filipino folklore as well as a unique mix of various film genres with traditional horror,” the FDCP said in an article on its website.

In Tagalog folklore, Hukluban is the metamorphic goddess of death. Her name is the Tagalog word for “crone,” a withered witchlike old woman. Curiously, its root word “huklob” means enchantment.

This was the concept behind Gabi Kung Sumikat Ang Araw, a drama thriller written by Ricky Lee, in which Gina Alajar played a nubile nightclub singer who enchants men at night and leaves them before dawn lest they discover her secret-daylight turns her into a crone.

Written by Enrique Ramos, who penned Direk Gil’s Pitik Bulag, Two Funerals and Ang Tag-Araw ni Twinkle, Hukluban expands and expounds on this same intriguing premise. This time, the story transpires in three eras across six generations and features the crone in ill-starred love affairs with three different men.

“This love is an unfulfilled love, an unrequited love, because of her condition. How do you marry a girl who is beautiful and young in the night time, but the moment the sun rises, she becomes an old woman, a crone? This is the story,” direk Gil said in the FDCP website.

Hukluban stars controversial sexy star Krista Miller as the cursed enchantress who roams at night in search of love and disappears before sunrise.

Intriguingly, her three lovers — a boxer crushed by depression and tuberculosis in 1948, a communist rebel harboring a dangerous secret in 1975 and an adventurous mountain climber in search of Maria Makiling in 2014 — are played by the same actor, rising indie star Kiko Matos (Babagwa and Mumbai Love).

Krista and Kiko, both uninhibited performers, bare body and soul in torrid love scenes throughout the film.

Known for molding newcomers (recently, Xian Lim in Two Funerals and Ellen Adarna in Ang Tag-Araw ni Twinkle) into solid thespians, direk Gil is pleased with the work of his two lead actors in Hukluban.

“I am very confident that Kiko and Krista will go very far in their careers after this movie,” he said.

Direk Gil is also proud of the make-up and prosthetics and the visual effects used to bring the crone to life. “I didn’t have these things in 1983 when I made Gabi Kung Sumikat Ang Araw. I’m happy to say that my vision of the crone has been fulfilled in this film,” he said.

Produced by the FDCP and Teamwork Productions, Hukluban will be screened along with three other films in SM Cinema theaters nationwide as part of the FDCP Sineng Pambansa Horror Plus Film Festival during Halloween Week (Oct. 29 to Nov. 4).