TV villains act up a nasty storm–but are found wanting

FROM left: Julia Barretto, Angel Aquino and Carmina Villaroel

With so many new drama series being launched on local TV every programming quarter, there’s a great need, not just for stellar leads viewers can love and empathize with, but also for villains evil enough to terrifyingly oppose them.

There’s a sufficient number of stars to go around, but too many series are weighed down by villains who aren’t convincingly threatening and terrifying, so their central conflicts can’t hit and move viewers where they live and breathe.

This insufficiency in terms of villainy has been hounding “Doble Kara,” with Carmina Villaroel proving to be not strong or nasty enough to make viewers fret for its protagonist. Yes, Carmina hits all of the technical kontrabida marks, but her thin voice makes her character come off as phlegmatic and weak, instead of strong and scary.

That goes double for “Ang Probinsyano,” which has unsuccessfully fielded the serial likes of Albert Martinez, Arjo Atayde, Richard Yap and Gina Pareño to make life dangerous and lethal for its protagonist, played by Coco Martin.

Ronaldo Valdez was effectively sinister when he joined the show, but he didn’t stay long enough to really make a big difference.

“And I Love You So” top-bills Julia Barretto as its bida-kontrabida. Initially, the casting choice seems to be a good idea, since Julia is a strong player—but, in performance, she has been banking too much on volume, pitch and strident delivery, and the effect has been stultifying.

The series’ other “lead villain,” Angel Aquino, has become a good and versatile actress through the years, but her current series ends up showing her in a bad light, due to the predictable and over-“heavy” scripting of her character.

What changes need to be made to more convincingly up the villainous and fearsome ante on our local soaps and drama series?

It would be “creepily instructive” to recall the indelibly and subtly scary characterizations of the evil genius and cannibal in “The Silence of the Lambs,” sadistic Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Robert De Niro’s unpredictable dangerous villain-interloper in “Cape Fear,” Tommy DeVito in “Goodfellas,” Faye Dunaway’s portrayal  of Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,” the cruel concentration camp commander in “Schindler’s List” and Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street.”

What do all of these iconic terrors and horrors have in common? They keep their evil cards and motives close to their chests instead of screaming and flaunting their nasty intentions all over the melodramatic landscape. In fact, they don’t say very much at all—but their deadly actions cause their victims extreme damage and grief!

In addition, they’re powerful people who know how to use their strengths selectively and for maximum evil effect.

They strike fear in their victims’ hearts by being “difficult to read,” so their vicious actuations catch most everybody off-guard, thus making them unable to respond and counteract them quickly enough.

It is this compelling combination of power, mystery and lack of scruples that makes them so effectively dangerous and terrifying—so our homegrown villains would do well to carefully study and learn from their creepy portrayals—the devil and the evil are in the details.