“Bloody Crayons” is supposed to be a suspense-thriller with a whodunit story about a mysterious killer, but sorry to say it fails to generate any kind of suspense. The plot is something we’ve seen in countless cheapy cheapy slasher flicks in Hollywood, where this is a favorite genre, and in the type of film that started with Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians”.
A group of young people, filmmaking students, travel to an island to shoot a short film. They stay in the old house owned by the family of Jane Oineza as Olivia, who used to be going steady with Diego Loyzaga as Ken. She’s hoping they’ll reconcile and doesn’t know that he is already in a relationship with Sofia Andres as Marie. When she discovers this, it proves to be the main conflict in the movie that becomes stressful for their whole barkada.
Aside from them, there’s also another love triangle in their group: Janella Salvador as Eunice, the group’s leader who is admired by Elmo Magalona as Kiko and Ronnie Alonte as John. The other members of the barkada are Maris Racal as Aprilyn, Yves Flores as Justin and Empoy Marquez as Gerald.
Setting up the narrative takes quite a time. It would have been not so cumbersome if the cast members are all charming and exciting to watch. But sadly, that is not the case. Even Empoy who is quite lovable in the hit “Kita-Kita” is quite a bore in here, so misplaced he sticks out like a sore thumb.
Thing gets a bit more bearable when the killings start after they play a confusing silly game called Bloody Crayons. For doing this, they get the punishment they so deserve. First, someone gets poisoned, then somebody falls off a cliff. Then the characters turn into stupid fools that they actually start killing each other.
The first rule for a thriller to work is for the viewers to find the characters sympathetic, so that they will get scared and feel for them when their lives are threatened. Here, our reaction is ‘sige, patayin na yang mga yan nang matapos na ang pelikula.’ It’s not at all entertaining but down right annoying. We actually applaud when someone idiotic gets killed. This is Director Topel Lee’s second mishap after his similarly execrable horror flick with GMA Films, “Basement”, that didn’t at all help the career of any of the Kapuso stars in its cast.
