Movie review: Kim Chiu is fun to watch in enjoyable ‘U-Turn’

Donna Suarez (Kim Chiu) has been a reporter at Daily Journal Online for 7 years now, but her career was going nowhere. One day, she chanced upon a freak accident involving a motorcycle hitting a displaced barrier blocking a U-turn. This caused the death of a young mother Elisa (Kate Alejandrino) and her daughter Anna (Miel Espinosa). Donna’s sensational coverage of this grisly incident finally gave her the viral news video her demanding boss (Cris Villonco) wanted.

One day, Donna’s twin brother Eric (Martin del Rosario) suddenly died from mysterious circumstances. With the help of a homeless man Tata Selo (Jerry O’Hara) and her policeman friend Kevin (JM de Guzman), Donna learned that Eric was just one of a series of presumed suicides all of whom made an illegal U-turn at that very same site right before their deaths. Donna boldly decided to go to the haunted road and knowingly make a fateful U-turn herself, taunting the ghosts to go after her next.

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That awesome scene where Donna was challenging the ghosts at the U-turn was such a precious Kim Chiu moment to rival her viral “bawal lumabas” video. The sequence after this scene was was when we see Donna do all the typical things we see foolhardy horror film heroines do — went home alone, kept all the house lights off, put her face near the drain of a sink, ran up the stairs instead of out the open door, hid under the bed sheets. Seeing Kim Chiu do all these horror scenes was pure entertainment gold. She made horror fun!

The rest of the cast were either underplaying their roles, like JM de Guzman and Mercedes Cabral (who both played cops), or overplaying them, like Alex Medina and Kate Alejandrino (who played a tragic couple). Tony Labrusca felt miscast as Robin, Donna’s literal boy friend, who was not as smart as he may think. His character and his whole Canada subplot was completely not material to the plot. Of course, there had to be an unnecessary scene where he would bare his torso.Like many horror films, majority of the scenes were too darkly lit to be clearly visible, but the sound of effect of the ghosts creaky bones made it known she’s there. The best-executed and original-looking horror scene was that one when Eric encountered the child ghost in the corridor of his condo. The dialogues were so cliched, they were actually quite funny, especially when you hear Kim Chiu delivering them. That final confrontation scene between Donna, Elisa and their respective partners was so gloriously melodramatic with everyone inviting the ghost to kill them instead of the others, it was hysterical fun.