Erik Matti’s “Honor Thy Father,” featuring John Lloyd Cruz in a very different role, aptly opens Cinema One Originals 2015 on November 8 (Sunday) in Trinoma at 7PM.
Erik Matti is a journeyman among crowd-pleasing genres, running the gamut of horror to fantasy to erotica to superheroes, but his more serious work tends to be in the more grounded crime genre, a very masculine, and often very dark iteration of it. As early back as his second film, “Ekis”, he’s been exploring male pathos through the lens of noir.
His recent “OTJ” used action tropes to interrogate our culture of corruption. In many ways, “Honor Thy Father” extends that interrogation, focusing this time, not on government, but on marketing and religion. All wrapped in a suspenseful drama about a young father forced to return to a past he has long run away from in order to save his family.
A very different John Lloyd Cruz from what we’re used to plays the young father in what may be his eventual breakaway role, being as removed as it can possibly be from the usual romantic leads and feelgood fluff he usually plays. Joining him are Meryll Soriano, Yayo Aguila, William Martinez and Tirso Cruz III.