Not knowing what to feel after an hour and a half of sitting through a horror movie is either a good sign or a bad one. In the case or Kampon, it’s most definitely the latter.

Synopsis: Ex-cop Clark Martinez (Derek Ramsay) quits being a police officer after a mysterious traumatic incident. Elsewhere, a desperate brother takes his ailing sister to a faith healer to bring her back from the dead. Fast forward to years later and a child ends up in Clark’s doorway claiming to be his daughter. All hell breaks loose when the child seems to be something other than what she appears to be.

First of all, let me just say that the entire film is a snooze fest. The script is lazy, and it’s annoying how they hard sell the couple’s issue on childlessness. Rather than add scenes to move the story along, the filmmakers instead focus on the back and forth between Clark and his wife Eileen (Beauty Gonzalez) about their plans to have a child because Clark is sterile.

In all fairness, Derek Ramsay tries to give his all to his acting but no one else really pulls their weight. Beauty Gonzales was as stiff as a board and the child actress they tapped for the role was passable, not memorable.

The story dragged on for an hour rotating around scenes involving Clark’s paranoia, with very little to build around the mystery surrounding the child. Instead of wasting precious scenes with side characters, filmmakers should have put in a bit more effort in setting the story of Loretta and her brother. What happened after the ritual? Because it seemed that Loretta lived normally before the accident. And what about this religious cult that they were part of? Instead, they devoted countless minutes to let Clark brood and cajole his wife into believing his innocence.

The effects were not very convincing. Both for the CGI and practical effects were sub par. The editing was awkward and the ending was even more meh. It tried to be shocking but it was ineffective because hey, we’ve seen this play out one too many times.

All in all, the biggest problem with Kampon was that it was not a one-of-a-kind story that would shock viewers. It did not even deliver on cheap scares if that was what it was after. The monster design was like a weird mod of Lord of the Rings’ Gollum but with a smaller budget. The plot was very similar to the Omen and countless Hollywood flicks with possession plot. There was really nothing special about the film and the actors were not even pushed to deliver the bare minimum. I was not a big fan of the last Shake Rattle and Roll but I wonder how it lost out its slot at the Manila International Film Festival to this substandard horror movie.