So obscure that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, Itim is the kind of movies Cannes Classics importantly promotes. Directed by the Filipino filmmaker Mike de Leon, the film gains sudden power and relevance as the son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was in power when the film was made, has just been elected president of the Philippines. At first mystical and spiritual, Itim later reveals an unmissable, haunting political streak.
Itim tells the story of a rich kid photographer Jun, who has gone off to Manila, returning home for an assignment. As he voyeuristically shoots women in a nearby town and barks orders at homekeeper Bebeng, he can come off as very obnoxious. But when he starts inviting his subject Teresa on dates, the film reveals a darkness within the country and the characters’ pasts, interrogating his privilege and masculinity among other things.
Though the film starts with a prayer, Christianity is not its initial focus. Instead, it is our spiritual connection with other people and with nature. Even if the viewer doesn’t believe in such things, they will be easily entranced by Mike de Leon’s hypnotic filmmaking. Itim spends a lot of patient time in the woods, though De Leon can easily ramp up the tension as well, matching dolly shots with precision in scenes of suspense. Some of its methods like a hazy filter for dream sequences and discordant cellos for tension might be a little predictable, but they are nonetheless effective. Some of the cross-cutting sequences are also slightly jarring, but Itim generally does not show the signs of a directorial debut.
But it is when Itim turns to horror that it truly shines. The film gradually reveals itself to be a ghost story, but whose ghost is it? The sins of rich abusive men come back to haunt them, but because the film shows such spiritual connection between land and people, one can’t help but think these are the sins of the country. Jun returns to a mansion that is mostly broken, and there’s an ominous radio broadcast about sexual assault elsewhere that is never brought up again. The title, which means “black”, comes from a reoccurring dream sequence of a prayer for God’s mercy. Soon, it becomes incredibly obvious that these sins and ghosts are not exclusive to the characters, but instead live in a larger picture. And because De Leon goes for the slow creep instead of the jump scare, the film takes on a truly haunting tone.
It may be easy to overthink this in light of the horrible news of dictatorship that has cast a dark cloud on those islands, but here is what De Leon just said about it:
[Horror] is no longer about a ghost but about the monsters of Philippine politics, monsters that, after a long wait in the subterranean caverns of hell, have returned to ravish and rape my country all over again. The crazy thing is that we invited them back.
Mike de Leon, May 20 2022
On mysticism and spirituality alone, Itim is a strong horror film that successfully creeps up on you. A lazy shorthand to summarize it is to say it precedes the mysterious films by Thai artist (and Cannes regular) Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But with the added political context, Itim firmly plants itself in literally today’s world, reminding us that a country’s sins will always hang around, and that horror is best when it’s political filmmaking.