The Healing Movie Review Horror Movie PDF

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The Healing Movie Review. Chito Rono's "The Healing," tells the story of Seth and her neighbors who rushed to Manang Elsa, a faith healer, in hopes of finding a cure for their serious diseases....

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The Healing: Reversed Chito Rono's "The Healing," tells the story of Seth and her neighbors who rushed to Manang Elsa, a faith healer, in hopes of finding a cure for their serious diseases. The neighbors implored Seth to take them to Manang Elsa after witnessing the miraculous recovery of her father from paralysis after being healed. Upon the group's arrival, they learned that Manang Elsa was sick and would not receive patients. Seth then convinced her, and she soon gave in. After the session, each one of them started to recover from their afflictions. Unfortunately, the consequences of the "healing" soon took place in the form of gruesome deaths. Seth must figure out how to end the curse before everyone dies. The film builds the story behind the "healing" by exposing social anxieties present in the community. The people's ailments were severe and almost impossible to cure instantly, such as breast cancer, psoriasis, diabetes wound, tumor, renal failure, and stroke paralysis. Apart from the fear of death brought by their illnesses, the characters have their own personal worries. It is shown through the backstory of one of the neighbors with a diabetes wound who needed to pass the medical tests required to work abroad to continue supporting her family in the province. On the other hand, the neighbor with severe psoriasis wanted to be healed immediately due to his fear that his fiancée would leave him after seeing his condition. The film also showed two kinds of people, one who was failed by ministrations of scientific healthcare and one who could not afford it. Nevertheless, they all decided to put their faith in Manang Elsa. It is noticeable that the film follows the flow of horror narratives discussed by Noel Caroll, an American Philosopher, in his work "Why Horror." Caroll (1990) notes, "These stories, with great frequency, revolve around proving, disclosing, discovering, and confirming the existence of something impossible, something that defies standing conceptual schemes." He

further discussed that the process of proving and disclosing the existence of the monster/unknown arouse the audience's interest as it seems to be unexplainable by standing cultural categories. The film signals the start of misfortunes as Seth was continuously haunted by crows which symbolizes death and mishaps in the Philippine culture the day after the "healing." Soon after the recovery of her neighbors, Seth started to see their doppelgangers before they individually became a bloodthirsty mass murderer who committed suicide after. The concept of a doppelganger, which originated from German folklore, is the existence of a spirit double, a person's replica. Meeting someone's double signals one's imminent death (Brittanica, 2019). The film then shows the violence of each doppelganger; one cut throats before cutting her own, and the other strangled herself after beheading her husband. The evil double of the policeman with psoriasis ruthlessly committed massacre during a raid in a gay brothel and the other one burned herself after throwing people from the third floor of a dormitory. The most gruesome scene is when the child’s doppelganger went on a killing spree in the Buddhist temple, stabbed the monks, jumped from the roof, and got skewered by a pole. Even though the death of the first neighbor hinted that there would be more to come, the horror and suspense are still maintained as it is expected that the subsequent deaths would be gorier than the previous one. Seth then discovered that Manang Elsa committed a mistake while healing the patient after his father. She inadvertently revived a dead patient named Dario whom she thought only passed out. The patients who were healed after him were paying for his extended life. As what Dario said, “Lilitaw ang mga diyablong kambal ng mga hinilom ni Elsa para saniban ang mga kaluluwang iaalay sa akin.” Manang Elsa's brother killed Dario, putting an end to the curse. The film utilizes the Filipino faith healing tradition which is continuously practiced in the country. Labastida (2016) explains, "It has a rich history dating back to the pre-colonial period

where babaylan, aside from being a religious leader, served as the main dispensers of health care to everyone in the community." It is connected to Christianity as faith healers believe that their ability to heal is given by a supernatural being such as the Holy Spirit. One of the characters in the movie called faith healing a scam and stated that only Christians believe in it. Still, the film chose not to challenge the efficacy of faith healing, considering the substantial Christian population. Instead, it exploited the anomaly in the healing process that gave birth to the devil in the story.

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https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-...