Director/Screenplay – Kenneth Dagatan, Producers – Bianca Balbuena, Stefano Centini, Huang Junxiang & Bradley Liew, Photography – Russell Morton, Music – SiNg Wu, Visual Effects – Malasamas Studio, Special Effects/Makeup Effects – Tawong Lipod Creative Studio, Production Design – Benjamin Padero & Carlo Tabije. Production Company – Epicmedia/Zhao Wei Films/Volos Films/Clover Films.
Cast
Felicity Kyle Napuli (Tala), Beauty Gonzalez (Ligaya), James Mavie Estrella (Bayani), Jasmine Curtis-Smith (The Fairy), Angeli Bayani (Amor), Arnold Reyes (Romauldo), Ronnie Lazaro (Antonio)
Plot
The Philippines in 1945, at the end of World War II. The Americans are coming to free the country from the Japanese occupation. Antonio agrees to go and help the Japanese. That leaves his wife Ligaya and two children Tala and Bayani in the house alone. When it becomes weeks and he has not returned, they face lack of food and Ligaya falls ill. The two children wander out the gates of the house into the jungle. They are separated and Tala comes across a shrine where a fairy appears to her. The fairy offers Tala help, promising that her father will return. The fairy gives Tala something that will heal her mother. This is an insect that Tala releases as her mother sleeps. However, Tala soon sees that the insect has entered her mother’s body and started to transform her into something monstrous.
In My Mother’s Skin was the second feature film for Filipino director Kenneth Dagatan. Dagatan had previously made the full-length horror film Ma (2018), which has many similarities to the plot here, as well as written the screenplays for the horror films Bloody Crayons (2021) and Tenement 66 (2021).
Immediately into In My Mother’s Skin, you realise what you are seeing is going to be an extremely good film. Kenneth Dagatan shoots everything in a quiet, visually subdued mood. Apart from occasional ventures out into the surrounding jungle, most of the film takes place in a big traditional house where there is no power, meaning that the lighting level is lowered and everything takes place in tiny islands of light surrounded by huge pools of shadow.
Although Beauty Gonzalez is the top-billed as the mother, the central point-of-view character is sixteen-year-old Felicity Kyle Napuli as the daughter Tala. Napuli gives an amazingly fresh performance. As she ventures forth searching the jungle and encounters the fairy, she is the essence of soulful innocence – you can see the fears and doubts written on her face, even as you know that what she is agreeing to is going to be a devil’s deal.
Jasmine Curtis-Smith as The Fairy
In My Mother’s Skin soon attains an incredibly creepy effect. Napuli gives the potion to her mother and a bug emerges from the jar, Beauty Gonzalez is healed but a few scenes later we see something lodged along her spine, wriggling and making chittering noises. Gradually Beauty starts manifesting the symptoms either of possession and/or vampirism. We see her unnervingly developing a long slithering tongue and increasing shock images like seeing her devouring a dog, or of the fairy biting the head off a bird.
The horrific effect in In My Mother’s Skin comes as much in us seeing things getting inexorably worse as it does young Felicity Kyle Napuli seeming powerless to do anything and whose only recourse seems to be to keep trusting the assurances of the fairy that everything is going to be fine. There is a particularly horrible scene, undeniably reminiscent of a similar one in The Descent (2005), where Felicity Kyle Napuli braves herself to wield the gun against the man (Ronnie Lazaro) who has invaded the house looking for gold – only to shockingly shoot the wrong person. This is a film that gets every step it takes, every piece of mood, every shock it pulls perfectly timed and without a step wrong in any direction.
