Good idea lost in the noise

Charming and brutal

Absolutely the worst movie.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

TIYANAK is a rural Filipino horror movie from 1988, feeling very much like the kind of localised supernatural horror flicks made in places like Malaysia and Indonesia in the early 1980s; I'm thinking films like MYSTICS IN BALI and SUNDEL BOLONG. This one's low budget and as a result pretty low key, but it's also fitfully atmospheric and full of scare sequences which amused me and entertained me throughout. It's also heavily derivative of the Hollywood flick IT'S ALIVE, featuring a demonic baby that goes around killing all those who attempt to care for it. The production values are low and the rubbery special effects anything but special, but there's something endearingly earnest about the whole production which I found somewhat appealing.