Assessing “Feng Shui” (2004)
Author’s note: Contains spoilers. Photos taken from film.
Feng Shui was a 2004 Philippine horror film that follows the story of Joy (played by Kris Aquino), a wife and mother of two children, who finds herself in the possession of a cursed bagua, a Chinese charm. As the bagua’s owner, she is cursed to receive good fortune in exchange of the lives of anyone who sees their reflection in the bagua’s mirror, with the “Lotus Feet” — the woman who made the curse — causing their deaths in payment for the good fortune. The bagua doesn’t discriminate: except for its owner, it will take the lives of anyone from loved ones to strangers who are unlucky enough to stare into its mirror. Good luck in exchange for another’s bad luck.
My first impression was the film simply portrays a kind of Chinese culture, whether accurate or embellished, as horror fodder. This came alongside a surge in popularity of Asian horror films with an emphasis on supernatural horror. Here, one recalls the iconic Sadako from the Japanese film Ring (1998), that awful, contorted woman climbing up from the well. Such characters are the likely inspiration for the Lotus Feet, a reference to the traditional Chinese custom of binding the foot of women with metal shoes from very early on at childhood, deforming the feet and thus greatly reducing their mobility. There’s a quick explanation of this practice in the film but of course she’s mostly remembered as the cloaked, pale-faced, and Asian version of a grim reaper. Her presence, forewarned by her metal shoes slowly and somewhat clumsily tapping as she trudges along, means that death is nearby. Somehow, that a spirit who can’t even walk properly becomes a death stalker makes her all the scarier. If Sadako can’t seem to walk on just two legs, well the Lotus Feet has some trouble with walking as well.
Material wealth is now suspect
The trope of someone or something that kills people one by one isn’t new. (We’d see Chito Roño use this theme in his future horror films with varying degrees of effectiveness.) There’s a set of characters who get killed in succession and you just can’t wait to find out which one dies next and which ones, if any, survive the whole ordeal. But what’s most unsettling about the mechanics of the Lotus Feet’s curse is that it simply strikes at the heart of our dreams of material prosperity.
Joy is your typical middle class, working mother juggling employment with homemaking, with dreams of material comfort like most people. That’s relatable enough but the idea that the prosperity that comes our way might actually have the price as dear as a total innocent’s life would be unthinkable. It’s not as apparent at first. Joy receives good luck and a relative stranger dies. But of course the deaths eventually come closer to home.
Joy eventually discovers the woman who was the bagua’s prior owner (played by Cherry Pie Picache) and is shown a glimpse of the kind of prosperity it can bestow. It’s visually made a point that the woman is much wealthier by the size and looks of her home, definitely better than Joy’s. The woman, perhaps having been in possession of the bagua for a much longer period, discovered on her own the mechanics of its curse but has already resigned herself to its consequences, showing a surprising lack of empathy in what she knows to be the real cost of the luck it brings. She doesn’t know how to end the curse but knows well enough that once the deaths end, the good luck also ends with it.
This encounter, aside from showing the prosperity the bagua can bestow, also shows the emptiness that come with it. As grand the woman’s house is, except for a housekeeper, there appears to be no one else, leading one to speculate that most of the people in her life — important or otherwise — have simply died off, explaining her wealth. Here the classic poor vs. rich dichotomy pervading most of Philippine drama creeps in. Better be the happy and righteous peasant than the ultimately miserable and evil rich snob. But there is no satisfactory resolution. Wealth, happiness, and righteousness don’t seem to mix.
Urban horror
There is a solid segment of Filipino horror that has played with the rural setting. For the typical urban-based audience, the unfamiliarity and exoticness of the rural environment is exploited for horror. Of course no one will help you in some far-flung village in the middle of nowhere when things start getting out of hand. People are far and few in between, you’ll probably live next to an aswang or a witch, and cellular reception is invariably lacking.
The rural horror trope is scary enough but for most people is comfortably distant. But Feng Shui invades you, the city-dweller, in all the comforts of modern, urban life. A good deal of the film is set in a private, gated community (a “subdivision” as Filipinos would call it), and if you want to live in relative safety and security in the Philippines, you’d probably want to live in such gated communities where security is privately provided and where access to the community is strictly regulated. Security guards posted at every gate ensure only authorized people are granted access and any “unwanted” elements are kept out. In any case, of course, the “unwanted” would simply be in the human range: from solicitors and panhandlers to thieves and murderers, and not include the malevolent spirit of a foot-bound Chinese woman and the souls she’s reaped.
In one of the first haunting scenes in the film, the spirit of a man who fell prey to the bagua makes an apparition and Joy (perhaps in a bit of self-denial) mistakes it as a possible intruder and the security guards are called in to inspect. Such security guards figure in a number of times in the film, being summoned for help and doing regular rounds throughout the gated community. This is by no means typical in the Philippine setting; not exactly upscale, but sort of middle class. To give background on the social context, or at least with what I saw as the situation the film tried to portray, you’re not really expected to call the police in such still premature circumstances; no one was actually robbed or hurt since the suspected intruder was simply an apparition. If you don’t have such private security at your call, then you just brush it off. Here the living arrangements are good and secure enough to have such security personnel, but they won’t be of any help, as is plainly and horrifically shown.
In a later scene that acts as a pivotal moment where Joy finally admits to herself the danger the apparitions posed to her family, one of the security guards falls prey to the bagua and his tortured spirit is seen walking near Joy’s children. One of the primary hallmarks of this urban and modern life can’t help you.
Nothing is simply a coincidence
Lotus Feet doesn’t strike you unprepared. If you weren’t made aware of the curse and you stared into the bagua’s mirror then you will die one way or another without being any the wiser. But if you’ve seen yourself in the mirror and eventually know about the curse, then you’ll be wise to look for the “signs”. There is no set method and deadline for you to die; you can die anytime for whatever reason and since you stared into the bagua, the curse must have been the cause. Even the film’s most explicit and violent moments only hint that Lotus Feet merely influences things and people in a complicated web that ends in the accursed’s death — Lotus Feet’s not going to actually kill you herself.
In the film, Chinese astrological signs determine the means by which the cursed meet their end. A man born in the year of the rooster dies in a stabbing at a local cockfight, and another born in the year of the snake dies, quite literally, of a snake bite. People will die whichever way is convenient to their present circumstances and the connections appear all too clear for Joy. Think for a moment that she’s just going insane, like how her husband was beginning to see her, as most generally sensible people would. After all, only she can see Lotus Feet and the apparitions of the souls she’s reaped. Now then, is it really a curse or just plain bad luck? This is particularly traumatic to our modern sensibilities that instill in us straightforward notions of cause-and-effect. Things just happen sometimes and if there’s no apparent cause, then it’s just a “coincidence” — a word brought up to exorcise the thought that some greater power, whether good or bad, could actually be at work. But here nothing appears to be coincidence.
Recall a scene towards the end of the film: A friend of Joy’s has offered to look after her two children, and they are on the road. Joy’s friend can’t quite remember if she stared into the bagua, nor can Joy’s children. But ahead of them is an agricultural truck carrying live chickens and cows. The truck is unruly, swerving from left to right. Something in the pairing of the cargo strikes her. She then asks for the birthdays of the two children with her. One was born in the year of the rooster, she automatically knows from memory. As for the other, “year of the ox,” she says to herself, realizing they actually have the same sign. A rooster may not exactly be a chicken and an ox not exactly a cow, but the woman has seen and read the signs, and suddenly this not-too-odd pairing of livestock has become a harbinger of death.
Some things are naturally frightening, so to speak. But to elicit horror and despair out of things that are so humdrum and ordinary is what good horror should be. This is something not entirely unfamiliar to us as our cultures are littered with superstitions on sign interpretation. Everyone wants to make a sense out of life. But instead of shining a new, comforting light on it, we find out that life itself can be unforgiving.
Photos taken from:
Roño, Chito (dir.), Feng Shui (ABS-CBN Film Productions, Inc., 2004).
