With his dark shades, Makoy (Dingdong Dantes) will do whatever it takes to get back his girlfriend Sonia (Lovi Poe), who is pregnant with his child. He makes the trip to remote and strange Pulupandan, her hometown, but he is quickly rebuffed by Sonia’s mother (Janice de Belen). Tired of his laziness and carelessness, Sonia refuses to see him as well. But Makoy is not the type to give up. With the help of Sonia’s father Nestor (Joey Marquez), and his faithful helper Bart (Ramon Bautista), Makoy pretends to leave the mysterious village, but in fact stays to surprise Sonia on her birthday.
However, he gets in trouble with a group of people who quickly appear to be “Tiktik”, or Aswang, horrific man-eating creatures, with a special taste for fetuses that are still in the women’s womb. They become angry with Makoy, and hungry for revenge. The birthday night turns out to be a nightmare, as the overwhelming Tiktiks want to quench their thirst for blood, and feast with Sonia’s fetus! A fierce and uneven battle starts between Makoy and his small company and the countless Aswang in Sonia’s house, which becomes a true inferno…until the final showdown and redemption.
With Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles, Erik Matti gives us another example of is creative duality, between gorish and relentless vampire films, where there is no limit to the violence and grotesque, and his more “auteur”-like intimate films, as The Arrival (2010, shown in Udine), or his more recent Rigodon. The amateurs of frantic wild movies with spectacular FX and no limit, yet almost parodic, violence will be sent to Heaven – or Hell!
Max Tessier