‘Hospicio’s’ creepy shoot

Loisa Andalio

I allowed some of the darkness to come to me,” said actress Ana Abad Santos of how she tackled her character in the horror-thriller, “Hospicio.”

Bobi Bonifacio’s film, an entry in the recently concluded Cinema One Originals festival, tackles the story of a mysterious drug rehab and wellness center that promises change to anyone who enters it.

Ana explained her character, Imang Lara: “I run the hospicio. Weird things happen there. My character is like the soul of that place. That’s how I attacked the role.”

She confessed there were times when “it felt creepy to stay in the place where we shot the film. We were given rooms in the building. Like me, (lead actress) Loisa Andalio didn’t stay in her room. I only wanted to be downstairs.”

To take away the stress from work, Ana recalled: “I didn’t go straight to my place. I ate out first, stopped at a convenience store, or got a drink before going home.”

What if?

Bobi said it was his writer’s idea to feature the story of drug addicts who “enter rehab centers and come out behaving very differently from how we know them… What if something horrible happened to them inside?”

The director said the film was set in an old hotel in Antipolo City that has been operational since the 1960s.

“For my initial planning, I got to stay there on my own. I toured the whole building and was even the one who turned on the lights in some areas,” he recalled. “True enough, I heard all sorts of things there.”

“Hospicio” is Bobi’s second film. The first, “Numbalikdiwa,” was also shot in Antipolo. The two films are 12 years apart.

“There’s a connection to the first film. If you notice, my lead star there, Meryll (Soriano), is also in this movie,” he pointed out.