Nightbird Review – Christine Bermas, Sid Lucero (Vivamax)

Christine Bermas is silent but deadly in this sexy thriller by Law Fajardo. In a party arranged by friends, Rachel meets four men. The night full of booze and drugs turns chaotic when the men rape Rachel and her friends. Rachel vows to seek vengeance no matter what it takes.

The film’s heavy on traumatic stuff and tries to give this empowerment BS and rising up from adversity and trauma. But it’s not effective. I mean S.A. and cold-blooded murder would really be traumatic and they went the action hero way which may be problematic for a lot of audience. Sure, its a work of fiction but it could have been tweaked a lot more because this is a sensitive matter pero hey, let’s just roll with it for the sake of this Nightbird review.

There was one scene in particular that I find rather OK and that’s that scene with Mark Anthony Fernandez’s character standing in the middle of the frame with a bull horns behind him seemingly making him look like a devil. I’ve seen that in the film Bula starring Ayanna Misola and its here again.

I was really expecting this to be at least half action but that was reserved solely for the end. I was a little disappointed because they were marketing the film as a revenge genre film in the vein of stuff like “I Spit on Your Grave“. But alas it was a miss.

I gotta hand it to the writing and production team because they wanted to showcase a lot of things and they actually did so too.

They set out to give the ladies led by Christine Bermas a nice show of their range for drama and we got that. Again, I have to say that Bermas is improving tremendously. Last I saw here was Scorpio Nights 3 and she was good there. Here she’s doing a lot better as she plays Rachel, this strong willed girl in Baguio who gets caught up in this sick game that the guys she met with in the bar are doing played by actors Sid Lucero, Aaron Vilaflor, Mark Anthony Fernanderz, Felix Roco and Ali Khatibi.

This turned out to be more of a drama with the “bros” actually getting more screen time as they flirt, argue and hesitate with what they plan to do with the Bermas’ character as well as two of Viva’s latest talents Alexa Ocampo and Chloe Jenna. Tapos the rest is just them doing the crime, getting rid of the bodies and trying to calm themselves; and lots of angst and crying.

Then the film flies off towards the supernatural too with Bermas getting a second shot at life and uses this axe that’s also heavily appeared in the marketing and public materials for the film.

Bottomline is (and I will do this in Filipino). Maganda sana sya kaso masyadong maraming scenes which could have been shortened. Gets that they want to showcase talent pero the story was getting too dragging. The sex scenes were obviously horrible especially since this had S.A. tones. Not to kinkshame or anything pero sobrang awful mo kung turned on ka sa ganyan. Anyway, the actors were all good naman. Bermas and the girls were also great and pretty. Pero what really gets me is how short the actual revenge scenes were. Seryoso, nilagay nila sa dulo. Patapos na yung pelikula and sobrang ikli; parang na realize nila “oh shit matatapos na run time natin, kelangan na natin i-wrap up”. While hindi naman talaga “plot holes” ang daming moments here na could have done more re-working sa script or execution.

Nasayangan din ako sa screentime na pwede sanang gawing action drama -revenge type film to. Pero at least makikita natin even sa simula ng film the level of physicality our lead gal puts in.

“Nightbird” could have been better, pero it’s “just alright” para sakin.

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