Surviving Evil is a little known movie with a UK-South African production team (Focus Films) and stars Billy Zane of Titanic and The Phantom. It’s placed in a supernatural Philippines setting (although filmed elsewhere) and is a horror flick patterned after the likes of Predator. Basically, a film crew out to shoot a movie on a deserted island in the Philippines get more than they’ve bargained for and end up as fodder for the picking for a local shape shifting human-monster called the aswang. It was released in 2009 but didn’t get much attention worldwide. It did make the big news in the Philippines since it featured renowned actor Joel Torre (following picture) and popularized an old folkloric belief.

Aswangs are supposedly ordinary people that have acquired the power to change shape into an animal like a dog (wolf) or some other supernatural creature with wings. Aswangs have a taste for human flesh and they go out at night to satisfy their hunger while in another shape or form. They are able to shape-shift with the use of a salve that’s prepared from special magical ingredients. Surviving Evil may have taken liberty in the depiction of the aswang, but it keeps the idea of the aswang being a bloodthirsty monster. With a movie crew involved, you can bet that a lot of the characters will fall victim to it. That’s usually what happens in such horror movies.

Billy Zane plays Seb Beazley (left), the media wilderness expert who inevitably leads the crew to its doom. It’s one project that he shouldn’t have taken. He’s the one who wields the bloody machete in the poster so it’s easy to place him in front of the group as the one who does a lot of hacking and slashing, and it’s not just the bush he whacks along the way. Since he’s the only one in the movie (so far) who’s got a big international name already, viewers can also safely assume that he gets to survive to near the end of the movie (if he survives at all).

Since most of the cast will be dead before the end, not much is given about their backgrounds except maybe for the fact that they are strangers to the wilderness and are easy picking for the aswang. They get a lecture on what the aswang is and then they get butchered. It’s typical, but it can be entertaining, if you don’t mind the average production and the fact that the aswang appears to be more like a native who’s angry of strangers entering its domain. The supernatural aspect and motivation of the person behind the aswang is lost or never tackled. After watching the movie, you might feel like doing some research on aswangs in the Philippine Islands and why Zane took the role as Beazley. If this kind of movie interests you, then you can try your luck and look for it in video stores.

Surviving Evil stars Natalie Jackson Mendoza, who's part Filipino and who also starred in The Great Raid, a docu-drama which was also filmed in The Philippines. Mendoza played tough girl Juno in the extreme caving horror movies, The Descent, and The Descent 2. She's the kind of actress who can fill roles designed for Michelle Rodriguez and Maria Conchita Alonso, who starred in Predator 2.

A sculpted aswang-werewolf planter decor from The Philippines

How to turn into an aswang


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