For their 18th birthday, twins Pat and Max (Julia Montes and Enrique Gil) go on their annual out of town family trip, to the far flung oasis of Murcia. Joining them are their parents Roy and Evelyn (Johnny Revilla and Cherry Pie Picache), their grandfather Pete (Jaime Fabregas), his temporary caregiver Paloma (Janice de Belen) and their newly hired family driver, Toning (Nico Antonio). The family members set aside personal differences and go on with the trip, as they look forward to the provincial excursion.
Treading the rough roads of the countryside, their happiness is cut short when their van hits an old lady on the road. Unsure of what happened, the family tries to search for the body but it is nowhere to be found. With the body missing, and protesting their innocence, Roy quickly asks everyone to go aboard the van and leave the vicinity. The van silently trudges its way along the dusty road but mysteriously stops after a few minutes in the middle of a forested area...
And from then on, as night sets in, the family is hounded by bad luck. Toning is attacked by an unknown creature, Roy and Lolo Pete are missing, and the rest of the family members are stranded in the middle of nowhere. Lost and confused, the remaining family members unite but things take a turn for the worst, when they realize that they are trapped in a barrio full of mysterious people headed by Kapitan Tasyo (Art Acuna), his wife Corazon (Tanya Gomez) and their son Crispin (JM de Guzman).
As they are stuck in the isolated village, a series of “aswang” (zombies/werewolves) attacks begin. Pat finds alliance and connection in the unlikely form of Dolfo (Enchong Dee), an enigmatic young man, but whom the villagers suspect to be evil. As the attack by the relentless aswang continues, Pat and Dolfo, together with Max, Evelyn and Paloma, and the rest of the villagers, battle it out for survival, in the hopes of making it through the night, alive and undead… Will the Zombies have the last bite?…
The Strangers is director Lawrence Fajardo’s first attempt at a mainstream movie, for the Metro Manila Film festival 2012, after his successes in Indie films, like Amok (2011), and especially Shackled (Posas, 2012), which gained attention at the Cinemalaya film festival. It is one more variation on the very popular “aswang” (zombies/vampires) theme in Filipino cinema, with more digital FX. Lost strangers in a forrest is also a familiar theme of the gender.