Babagwa (The Spider’s Lair) is a Filipino movie about catfishing.
Babagwa by Jason Paul Laxamana (Boboy says it’s BA-bag-wa, not Ba-bag-WAH or Ba-BAG-wa) is a movie about internet scam artists who find their marks on Facebook.
Our friend Renly is an IT guy.
So we asked Renly to review Babagwa from the perspective of an IT professional. Kind of an expert opinion.
Babagwa reviewed by Renly the IT guy
I ended up multitasking as I was watching the screener. Sorry, we IT professionals tend to work this way. I guess the only way to do this is in bullet points.
* The opening scene threw me off a bit. They used the same lipstick on all the kids, and even on the teacher. All the lips in that scene had the same color.
* Point where my disbelief was suspended: When Greg knocks on Neri’s door and she says “Bakit andito kaaaa??”
* Kung ako si Marney:
– Pinirmahan ko na ang kontrata sa apartment ora mismo!
– I would not ask for Php 20,000. I would ask for small amounts not worth reporting to the police, say Php500, maybe even Php1500.
– I would not use a bank account as my conduit. There’s GCash, Smart Padala, Cebuana.
– That fake account buildup strategy was spot on, though. I know someone who had an internship at a PR company in 2010. His tasks were similar to the strategy in the movie. He was asked to create six fake Facebook accounts. He had to give them personalities and map out their relationships. He was then asked to ‘friend’ a list of other profiles.
– Parang Napoles no?
* There is actually a word for this and it’s Catfishing. Ah, so this movie is about catfishing!
– Hey, is that why that scene opened with Marney’s dad scaling a fish? Was that the catfishing reference?
Okay, so:
* Nice, a Pinoy movie about catfishing!
* I liked Greg, Marney, and Neri. They seemed like real people.
* People catfish for a variety of reasons; too bad the filmmakers picked the least plausible one (for money) as the primary motivation in the film.
* They could have spent more time showing different catfish techniques and behaviors…Sana tinodo na nila. An explicitly gruesome ending for the scammer as a sex slave, de lata (sa steel drum) or stewed genitalia (soup No. 5) would’ve been more interesting to me.
We should have Quick Change reviewed by a transwoman, Badil by a small-town election operator, The Guerilla is a Poet by an NPA rebel, Sonata by an opera singer, Ang Turkey Man ay Pabo Rin by a Pinay married to a foreigner, Puti by an art forger, and so on.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 2nd, 2013 at 10:56
Who then should review Sana Dati? Anyone’s who’s loved and lost? Haha