Brilliant and touching

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is the most rudimentary ghost story I've seen in some time, and also one of the most frightening. It re-awoke what I used to know as a child but a surfeit of ghost stories and movies had since made me forget: how horrible it would be to be haunted. The constant fear of coming home, or going to sleep, or turning around.... The sense of this is conveyed partly by the plain but nerve-jangling music and sound, partly by the two leading actors, who know how to be scared, but mainly, I think, because the movie observes its ghosts with the same directness and apparent belief as its living characters. It is helped in this by the absence of high-tech effects, and also by its inelegant look (which may have been intentional): grotty color, blurry focus, and a general air of undependableness. This is one for ghost story fans to watch alone in the dark.

Look past the production value of The Echo (Sigaw) and you'll know what I'm talking about.While yes, the cinematography, direction and editing is good, the attempts at scaring viewers is too obvious and highly predictable. After 10 minutes into the film, I already know the basic story and the possible outcomes. At least The Others had me wondering for an hour.One thing Laranas must take into account is more attention to detail. He spend too much time making sure his shots is eerie enough to be part of the horror genre, but he (and the entire production crew) forgot details that would have added much realism to the movie. Yllana's "costumes" are way too clean for a two-bit police officer - his uniform is too new and doesn't look even used. I was bothered at the lack of blood splatter on him and his clothes during the hacking scenes. Was he wearing an invisible shield? Even the stick was clean (and not dripping with blood after hitting Calzado several times over) when he went for the little girl. Getting beaten up on the head by a police stick would usually result to a cracked skull, and not merely a small wound oozing out blood. Normally, a person would be literally knocked out and be unable to stand, much less protest. The wound on Guevarra's head changes places - from the right side of her head when she first appears in the elevator, and then on the left sometimes center side in other parts of the movie. Can someone make a decision where the wound should be? And stick to that decision. On to the actors: too rehearsed, bad and not to mention "forgetting what to do next". They are all too conscious of their own looks. I'm sure that if I get kicked, dragged, punched – my hair would be a mess. But not Locsin, whose hair falls back into place quite beautifully after the scene. Another idea for a hair commercial? Probably. Secondly, night-after-night beatings would definitely result in a swollen upper lip, a bruised cheek and all that. This time, not Calzado, who only has a few minor "charcoaled-in" bruises.The eerie-ness of the movie was not helped by the sound effects that were just too loud. After a while you started to expect it already. It would have been better to have more naturally creepy sounds than music that get too loud at "suspenseful" moments.There are also scenes that elicit a "huh?", which I will not discuss because I am sure that there are people who has not seen the movie yet. It's not a great "scare" movie but if Hollywood will do a remake, maybe it will be a better version. Laranas should review his movie and plug the holes so there will be no leaks this time.

Just when horror movies were becoming predictable, SIGAW and its director Yam Laranas came along to deliver the biggest scare of all.And it's a scare that's not achieved with special effects and thick makeup and even thicker music -- but by going to the core of what really scares us.That noise we can't explain. That thing that doesn't look right. That person who is there but should not be there. Something that seems to be following you. Sigaw is genuinely, deeply creepy.I don't know if Hollywood would see they've got a gem of a film here. Sigaw has its peculiar sense of timing. It certainly doesn't conform to a Hollywood formula of one scare per ten minutes. There is a long scene where the director keeps you in a state of simple nervous expectancy. And then are there are non stop scares where you're hardly allowed to breath. But that's exactly why fans of horror will need and want this one. It's a shot in the arm for the genre.

To start with, I'm an American "mutt." I don't consider myself to belong to any culture unless "white bread" should start appearing on the US census. I speak almost no Tagalog (Filipino), and understand little. That said, I watched "Sigaw" on DVD with English subtitles."Sigaw" is an interesting movie. It lacks the visual cues to let an American audience know "This is the present..." "this is the past..." but it's a movie that shows the history of a haunted apartment building in parallel (past and present). We see a struggling restaurant owner trying to make sense of the noises and getting little sleep. We see another younger man trying not to get involved in a very loud domestic dispute.The movie centers on the present-day man trying to make sense of it, and just trying to get by, hopefully by ignoring it. The movie is mostly atmospheric, with a few surprises, and little gore. Similar to the "The Others" and "Sixth Sense", most of the fun is trying to figure out what's the story, and what's the right solution.American cinema often borrows from foreign. "The Birdcage" is a remake of a French play. "The Ring" and "The Grudge" are both remakes from Asia. Doing an American remake of "Sigaw" might be worthwhile for a director who values atmosphere and story over effects and gore. On the whole, I'd recommend "Sigaw" for Americans who enjoy wondering about what goes bump in the night...