Right, well I assumed that I was sitting down to watch a thriller, as I sat down here in 2023 to watch the 2022 Filipino movie “Bula”. The movie was labelled as a thriller, so that was what I was expecting to get. Sure, I hadn’t even heard about the movie prior to watching it, but still I opted to watch it, as it is an Asian movie that I hadn’t already seen.
Had I known that it was a part thriller and part softcore erotic movie, I might just have skipped on spending 104 minutes on watch it. Writers Bobby Bonifacio Jr. And Juvy Galamiton didn’t exactly put together a particularly thrilling or much of any interesting storyline here. Sure, “Bula” was semi-watchable, but that was all there was to it. The storyline was flaccid, pardon the pun here in this softcore erotic movie, and nothing much of anything thrilling or interesting happened, and the character gallery was fairly one-dimensional.
I wasn’t familiar with the cast ensemble in “Bula”, given my very limited exposure to the Filipino cinema. However, I will say that leading actress Ayanna Misola (playing Meldie) definitely seemed to have some acting talent to her, and she put on a good performance and carried the movie quite nicely, despite of nothing having much of anything to work with.
“Bula” was a swing and a miss in terms of entertaining me. And this is definitely not a movie that I would recommend to fans of the Asian cinema. As for this being a thriller, nah, don’t get your hopes up.
My rating of director Bobby Bonifacio Jr.’s 2022 movie “Bula” lands on a generous three out of ten stars.
