May 2, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Sailesh Kolanu
Tagalog with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Manila area in the Philippines, the horror film “Untold” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An ambitious TV reporter has nightmarish visions where she sees ghosts and other supernatural beings connected to notorious massacre that changed the course of her career.
Culture Audience: “Untold” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching horror movies that have more style than substance.
“Untold” could’ve been a worthwhile horror film that draws parallels between an ambitious TV reporter haunted by ghosts and haunted by her past unethical media exploitation. This muddled, poorly written movie over-relies on jump scares that go nowhere. Most of the movie is just a compilation of jump scares, with the sloppily constructed plot thrown in somewhere in this tangled mess.
Directed by Derick Cabrido and written by Enrico C. Santos, “Untold” takes place in the Manila metropolitan area in the Philippines. The movie begins with a harrowing scene of TV reporter Vivian Vera (played by Jodi Sta. Maria) on the scene of a girl being taken hostage by a woman at night in front of a house in the city of Caloocan. Vivian and her camera operator Jasper Torres (played by Juan Karlos Labajo) are stationed outside for a live report.
Vivian tells Jasper she’s going inside the house, even though that would be trespassing. Jasper tells her, “This isn’t right anymore.” Vivian sneaks inside the house anyway. Inside, she sees a woman slapping a girl named Nenuca (played by Samara Keira H. Dela Cruz), when Vivian sees herself turning into a demonic-looking ghost, who shoots the abusing woman. But surprise! This is just a nightmare that Vivian is having.
Get used to seeing a lot of hallucinatory scenes in “Untold,” because the movie is overstuffed with them. It’s established fairly early in the story that Vivian can see ghosts or unexplained spirits. She often goes into a trance during these hallucinations, which are starting to affect her job.
Vivian is close to her widowed mother Monica Vera (played by Gloria Diaz), who works as a waitress at a local cantina. Vivian’s father, who died 13 years earlier, was a well-known TV reporter. Vivian had a lot of love and respect for her father. She feels haunted by his death and wants to do well to honor his legacy in TV journalism.
Vivian works as a host/reporter for a tabloid-styled show called “Untold” at Mon News Network. She is an experienced professional, but Vivian is not known for being a warm and welcoming person. She is somewhat dismissive of a new and younger co-worker named Louise Amador (played by Kaori Oinuma), who is part of Vivian’s team of producers. Louise is eager to learn and seems to be friendly.
A few years ago, Vivian became a star reporter because of exclusive video that she got of a notorious mass murder that happened on under-development property owned by a major corporation called Cateland Development. Some of the local villager residents protested Cateland’s plans to build in this area. When some of these protestors (about 10 people) went to the property at night, they were thrown in a pit by security guards, who poured cement in the pit to kill the protestors, who were half-buried in the pit.
A man named Ernesto Malugag (played by Francis Mata) was the leader of these security guards. He was sent to prison for this mass murder. The big news of the moment Ernesto ha been released from prison. His conviction was overturned because of lack of evidence. Vivian had also been investigating Cateland Development for corruption.
Vivian’s callous and manipulative boss Sylvia (played by Mylene Dizon) tells Vivian that she needs to get the first exclusive interview with Ernesto after he gets out of prison. Sylvia says that Vivian’s recent new stories have been “dull and overrated.” Sylvia says that if Vivian gets this interview with Ernesto, “it will resonate with the board of directors” at the network.
One day, Vivian is outside when a mysterious woman named Diana (played by Angel Raymundo) approaches her and hands her a bracelet made of rope with some random small trinkets attached. “Share my blessing,” says Diana. Vivian tries to ignore this stranger, who insists that Vivian take the bracelet. Diana’s voice then turns menacing as she tells Vivian: “You buried the truth. It wants to come out.”
Vivian continues to see hallucinations. She visits a former co-worker named Benjie (played by Joem Bascon), who used to be her camera operator, at his apartment building. But when he opens the door, he doesn’t want to let her in or talk to her. As soon as he shuts the door, Vivian sees Benjie in the hallway walking to the door.
In various places, Vivian goes into trances where she imagines ghouls, demons or zombies are chasing after her. Sometimes she “freaks out” during these trances. Although the visual effects and makeup for these hallucinations are passable for this low-budget film, after a while, these visions become too repetitive because they don’t show or tell anything new that furthers the story.
Later in the movie, Vivian is required to see a network-appointed psychiatrist (played by Lotlot Bustamante), who thinks Vivian probably has post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s another subplot that reaches a dead end because Vivian’s PTSD diagnosis is never mentioned again, and she’s never seen in therapy again. This scene could have been cut out of the movie and it would’ve made no difference to the story.
“Untold” also goes into a bizarre tangent of showing flashbacks of what Vivian was like before the Cateland massacre. In order to get ahead in her job, Vivian faked a news story about an unnamed restaurant serving cat meat to their customers. In fabricating this story, Vivian hacked up a black cat she owned named Kitty Marie and filmed herself (without showing her face) preparing the cat’s remains as mincemeat.
Vivian then used this disgusting recording as “evidence” that a restaurant was serving cat meat. This movie is so stupid, it shows Sylvia accepting this video for a news story, without requiring Vivian to name the restaurant where this “cat meat” was being served. Vivian fabricated this news story because she was competing for a promotion with a co-worker named Elaine Arnaiz (played by Sarah Edwards), whom Sylvia deliberately pitted against Vivian. The hoax worked because Vivian got the promotion.
During the course of this jumbled story, Vivian meets Amanda Teotico (played by Lianne Valentin), the young adult daughter of Teresa Teotico (played by Ge Villamil), one of the massacre victims. Vivian has hallucinations that the massacre victims are haunting her too. It’s eventually revealed why she’s being haunted by the massacre victims. This reveal is not surprising, considering after the cat meat hoax, it’s very obvious that Vivian will do whatever it takes to do a news story that she thinks will boost her career.
“Untold” brings Benjie into the story because Vivian misses working with him and because Benjie knows a big secret about Vivian. The excessively and increasingly meaningless jump scares lead up to a nonsensical chase scene and an underwhelming ending. The cast members’ performances aren’t very good and cannot overcome the substandard screenplay and messy direction. “Untold” started with a potentially interesting concept, but the movie failed to develop the concept into a good story and uses too many jump scares as lazy fillers for plot deficiencies.
Regal Entertainment released “Untold” in select U.S. cinemas on May 2, 2025. The movie was released in the Philippines on April 30, 2025.
