Creatures from another world

Shortcut: Spirit Warriors 2

The art of scaring people has become very, very expensive, in case you didn’t know. It’s not just enough to fill up the big screen with distorted and some such frightening faces! Now, producers go to great lengths spending millions and millions on special effects and other high-tech state-of-the-art tricks to make you scream inside the dark moviehouse – and love it.

Two year ago, Regal Films’ entered Spirit Warriors, directed by Chito Roño and starring the Streetboys (Spencer Reyes, Danilo Barrios, Vhong Navarro, John Hilario and Christopher Cruz) at the Metro Manila Filmfest and raked in the money.

In this December’s Metrofest, Regal is at it again, offering this time Spirit Warriors 2: Shortcut with the same director and the same cast in an entirely new adventure with new props, new special effects (by Roadrunner), more horrible creatures from the other world. The film is scarier than ever.

The movie opens with a Babaylan hotly pursued by a group of Spanish soldiers. The time is the late 1700s. The Spaniards are on a mission to stomp out the vestiges of animistic religion to supplant with Catholicism. The Babaylan taunts the pursuing soldiers, telling them to leave the land. She wears a powerful amulet. One of the Spanish soldiers takes aim and fires.

The amulet gets hit, and so is the Babaylan before she disappears into thin air and materializes in another part of town. Before she expires, she buries the amulet, entrusting the broken pieces to the world of shadows and the spirits of the water world.

Centuries later, the story opens with the Spirit Warriors.

The Spirit Warriors are a group of young people who have engaged in the exploration of the spirit world and the occult. They have once been successful in exploring the world of the elements.

It has been three years since they last got together as a group in the successful foray into the spiritual. Now they get together again, despite their initial vow never to deal with the spiritual world again.

On the initiative of Red who has shown them the phenomenon of the "short cut" where a spirit crosses the time and space barrier and moves from one distant place to another in a matter of seconds, the Spirit Warriors get to know an old millionaire named Harry.

Harry contracts the services of the Spirit Warriors to retrieve the broken amulet of the Babaylan. His extensive research has shown how powerful and beneficial the amulet would be. It is a legacy that has to be retrieved.

Initially, the Spirit Warriors decline. But Red is deceived into accepting the mission. The problem, however, is that acceptance of the mission carries with it a curse. One is not allowed to retreat.

Friendship propels the other members of the group to come to Red’s rescue and join him in the terrifying journey into the shadow world of the aswangs and the tiyanaks, and the sea world of the mermaids where they have to find the broken pieces of the amulet that they have to bring back to Harry.

The adventure becomes a test not only of courage but also of principles and beliefs as the youngsters discover not only themselves, but some answers to the intercate questions of life, and the history of Filipino bravery that the amulet signifies.

Take a peek at what the Warriors encounter:

• Pugad ng mga Aswang/Gubat ng Kadiliman is a dark forest inhabited by many supernatural creatures. It’s the first stop on the boy’s adventure to retrieve the missing parts of the amulet.

• Cave of wonders. Inside the care is a grand palace with gigantic pillars revealing a high ceiling of stars. This is where the boys get the second piece of the amulet.

• Titanic-like ghost ship appears from nowhere to whisk the boys off to the realm of the mermaids.

• Fight scene in Mermaid realm/tidal pool is where the boys battle crystal versions of themselves as mermaids and other denizens of the deep observe them.

• A meteor shower in skies above church cemetery. The scary, action-packed finale of the movie featuring a game of cards played with cadavers coming back to life.

• The Shortcut, the Spirit Warriors are "lucky" enough to use the pathway to travel a great distance instantaneously at the film’s end.

• The Flying Scene where the Warriors experienced an ET-like adventure to escape from the evil elements.

Here are some of the creatures waiting for you:

• Babaylan – a female spirit who can float in mid-air and disappear at will.

• Man in Shadows – half-man, half-engkanto who can transform into a horse

• Half-man, half-horse, tikbalang

• Family of tiyanaks

• Aswangs reinterpreted to look more animal-like by direk Roño, which can burst into hundreds of bats which attack the boys like bees. The movie has about 20 of them.

• Eangkanto army – helps the boys defeat the aswangs

• Flying/jumping fish