‘Nasaan Ka Man’ REVIEW: Horrors Within Cycles and Secrets
‘Nasaan Ka Man’ REVIEW: Horrors Within Cycles and Secrets
Joven (Jericho Rosales) bids his goodbye to Pilar (Claudine Barretto).
This review contains minor spoilers for Nasaan Ka Man. Content warning for the article as it mentions themes of sexual violence.
There is a vicious cycle existing in the entire film. A cycle of traumas buried in the past that eventually became secrets. And this is where the film roots its horror: within these cycles made by an authoritarian-like apparatus and the secrets that caused them anxiety as they repress them. These cycles would perpetuate unless recognized wrong to correct them.
The film starts with a secret: the romantic relationship between Joven and Pilar, two of the three adopted siblings by Lilia and Trining. This reveals another as Lilia, hesitant to the relationship, recalls when her father forbade her to meet her boyfriend when she was younger. As the matriarchs support the two upon realizations, it is then revealed that Ito, one of the siblings, is attracted to Pilar. Secrets under secrets. These confessions result in Ito’s extreme obsession and madness. This is when the horror starts.
Each character hides something. These secrets are kept in a confined place—unknown. It’s far from the city, up the mountain, inside a fenced house, and led by a restricted household. In fact, Ito said that instead of feeling home, he thinks that he’s imprisoned. This is one of the most effective methods to imbricate horror in the film’s literary aspect. The existence of the unknown triggers anxiety and fear for one doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.
But in these unexplored geography and unanswered subconscious are characters who are eager to look for answers. This is what pushed the narrative forward—curiosity. Where this is also a form of resistance as they push themselves to the limit of knowing something, of getting answers whatever it takes.
We have Joven and Pilar’s resistance to Lilia’s initial disagreement to their relationship. Lilia’s resistance to her father’s contention to her ex-boyfriend. These similar forms of resistance happened in different times. However, the reinforcement of the film language with the repetition of events isn’t coincidental. In one scene, Pilar was raped by Ito. And as we traverse to the ending, we are informed that Trining was also raped by Lilia’s ex-boyfriend. There is a proficiency with using an intentional parallelism as a tool in storytelling—mirroring, to be specific. It justified Lilia’s change of mind. She doesn’t want her adopted children to experience what she did. She is also unaware that she’s projecting her traumas to her children by being strict to them. This is also the same reason why Trining empathizes with Pilar. It’s because Trining experienced this and she knows how it feels to be helpless and silenced.
Pilar dances with Joven in a town celebration.
This is how they ended each unresolved trauma in the past. They were forced to revisit buried secrets and memories to break the cycles that they’re in. Traumatizing cycles that exist in the family. This illustrates the Filipino family as an apparatus—something suffocating and controlling. The film roots its horror in the Filipino culture: one being “much” tied in with their family. It is when parents become an institution that holds authority over their children. This is the horror of the Filipino family.
The film ends with freeing the secrets. This is also when the horror ended. Finally, they are untied from the forces that give them uncertainties with inevitable terrors. Beyond the film’s formalist achievement lies an interesting transformation of secrets to anxieties—and anxieties to horror.
