At this year’s NYAFF I was surprised to see that there was only one midnight film, which is a bummer because those are my favorite to attend. The movies are always crazy and the crowd is always so much fun to be around because everyone is excited for the madness that they know will unfold on screen. So since there was only one midnight feature I figured it had to be good but I should have approached with caution because Rico Maria Ilarde’s The Fridge (Pridyider) is a Filipino film and I haven’t met anyone yet that’s been a real fan of the country’s films that have played this festival thus far.
After being sent to the USA to live with her Aunt, Tina’s (Andi Eigenmann) parents mysteriously die and she is left in the dark. Needing a break from life in the states and heading to the Philippines with the desire to open a restaurant, Tina moves back into her childhood home to get a fresh start. While in the house, she starts seeing and hearing things and pretty soon she realizes that her refrigerator is haunted. After getting the lowdown on the mystery surrounding her parents’ death, her mother went psycho on her father and began killing and eating women that her husband went on dates with, she realizes that her fridge might have something to do with the strange visions and the dead cat she found in her milk. Eventually the truth is revealed, that not only does this fridge keep her food cold, it also eats people.
When The Fridge wants to be funny, it nails its cues. The comedic elements are most certainly laugh out loud but then you have the bonus of some unintentionally funny romantic interactions and dialogue that’ll make you either scoff or laugh (I laughed). The best parts were always when the fridge attacked, which happened a handful of times because it used tentacles to grab people and suck them into the fridge with the exception of some demon killer hand. The reason those were the best parts are because a) you got to watch a refrigerator kill someone and b) the follow-up reactions from the characters were priceless. How does one seriously say to another individual “Dick was killed by my refrigerator,” or “my fridge killed someone” and then have a priest reply with, “yes, I know of that fridge and will not help.” Honestly, it’s those campy, ridiculous moment which make the movie worth watching (along with the basic premise) Oh and yes, there was a character named Dick and I thank the screenwriter for that fantastic choice.
Going into the film The Fridge had a fantastic concept and that’s a
ll it needed to fill seats, what I wasn’t expecting was that The Fridge was played more like a mystery romantic feature more than a splatterific horror with comedic elements. When you read the synopsis above and imagine all the possibilities that could be done with it, one might expect pandemonium in the vein of Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, a movie about a serial killing tire, but instead we get a mystery, semi-thriller hybrid with only a few moments of hilarious insanity that involves the fridge killing people. The rest of the humor comes from the campy acting, oddball neighbors and a romance that was way too convenient (though they usually are).
The Fridge was an average midnight selection. It didn’t hit all of its marks, the climax could have been crazier and there could have been a lot more done with the concept but what we get is enough to make us stupidly grin because someone out there actually made a movie about a killer refrigerator. There is even a moral to this story and that is that women are psychos and when they get insanely jealous and suspicious they will kill the women you meet, eat them, and then cast a spell to haunt you via refrigerator which will then kill anybody that gets close to it.
Rating: A moderately fun midnight film with an awesome concept but there was definitely more room to explore and go crazy (5.5/10)
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