Here’s something I never thought I’d say about Filipino cinema: we finally have a proper vampire film. Not an aswang movie dressed up with fangs. Not some campy horror-comedy hybrid. An actual, honest-to-god vampire film with all the trappings—sunlight sensitivity, blood cravings, immortal angst, the whole package.
So why did I spend half the runtime checking how many minutes were left?
The Time That Remains is frustrating in the way only ambitious films can be. Director Adolfo Alix Jr. set out to create something genuinely different for Filipino cinema, blending Western vampire mythology with indigenous folklore, using the undead as a metaphor for colonial trauma across centuries. It’s visually striking, culturally layered, and clearly the product of serious thought and craft. It’s also glacially paced, drowning in romantic melodrama, and maddeningly unclear about what kind of film it wants to be. I watched a vampire movie that’s somehow not classified as horror, and I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.
A Vampire Film That Actually Follows the Rules
Let me start with what genuinely impressed me: this is, as far as I can tell, the first proper Filipino vampire film that actually adheres to established Western vampire mythology while simultaneously weaving in indigenous folklore. And that’s no small feat.
Filipino cinema has a long, rich history with supernatural creatures, particularly the aswang—shapeshifters that have been terrifying audiences since the first sound film in Philippine cinema, 1932’s Ang Aswang. We’ve had countless aswang films over the decades: Peque Gallaga’s 1992 Aswang, Jerrold Tarog’s 2011 remake, and even romantic comedies like Ang Darling Kong Aswang (2009). The aswang is deeply embedded in Filipino culture, particularly in the Visayas region, and these creatures come in many forms—the manananggal that separates its torso, the tik-tik that sucks viscera, various shapeshifters.
But here’s the thing: traditional aswang lore is very different from Western vampire mythology. Aswangs typically prey on pregnant women and unborn fetuses, they transform into dogs, cats, or pigs, and they’re repelled by salt, garlic, and stingray tails fashioned into whips. They’re not quite vampires in the Dracula sense.
The Time That Remains does something interesting—it creates a hybrid. Carlo Aquino’s Matias is a Kalinga warrior from 1570 who gets bitten by a Spanish vampire during the colonial period. The film gives us the full Western vampire package: he burns in sunlight, needs blood for sustenance, has issues with mirrors and crosses (though the film handles these flexibly), and possesses immortality. But then it adds the aswang shapeshifting element—Matias transforms into a black cat, not the traditional bat or wolf of Western lore.
This hybridization is actually quite clever from a historical perspective. The film uses vampirism as a metaphor for Spanish colonialism itself—a foreign curse that enters the Philippines and transforms the indigenous population. It’s a fascinating concept that adds layers to what could have been just another romantic vampire story.
The Pacing Problem
Now, here’s where I start to lose patience with the film. At 1 hour and 56 minutes, The Time That Remains feels significantly longer than it should. The narrative structure employs dual timelines—the present day, where an elderly Lilia (Bing Pimentel) lies hospitalized after a home invasion, befriending nurse Isabela (Beauty Gonzalez), and the past, spanning from 1941 during the Japanese occupation to 1954.
In theory, this structure should create tension and slowly reveal the mystery of Matias and Lilia’s relationship. In practice, it often feels plodding. The film takes its sweet time establishing atmosphere and character relationships, prioritizing mood over momentum. I found myself checking how much runtime was left more than once, which is never a good sign.
The romance between Matias and Lilia is given extensive screen time, and while I understand that’s the emotional core of the film, it veers into territory that felt excessively sappy for my taste. There’s a lot of longing looks, poetic dialogue about eternal love, and bittersweet moments that are clearly designed to tug at heartstrings. If you’re someone who loves deeply emotional, tragic romance, this will probably work for you. For me, it felt overwrought.
Why Isn’t This Classified as Horror?
This brings me to something that genuinely puzzles me: Netflix classifies this as “Drama” and “Romance,” with tags like “Bittersweet,” “Dark,” “Fantasy Movie,” and yes, “Vampires.” But horror? Nowhere to be found in the official classification.
And I have to ask: why not?
The film includes multiple brutal deaths. Matias, in his vampire form, kills rapists in 1954 as revenge for Lilia’s assault. There’s violence, there’s blood, there’s the inherent horror of a creature that needs to feed on humans to survive. The present-day timeline involves a series of suspicious deaths being investigated by a police inspector. The film even draws visual and thematic comparisons to Nosferatu, one of the foundational texts of vampire horror cinema.
Yet it’s not marketed as horror. I suspect this is a deliberate choice—the film clearly wants to position itself as a prestige romantic drama with supernatural elements, not a genre horror film. It’s chasing the Twilight audience more than the Let the Right One In crowd. The focus is overwhelmingly on the tragic romance and the philosophical questions about immortality, mortality, and the meaning of love across time.
But I can’t help feeling this does the film a disservice. There are genuinely unsettling moments, particularly involving Matias’s transformation and the revelation of what he is. The atmosphere, especially in the Baguio setting with its fog-shrouded mountains and mysterious landscapes, creates a genuine sense of dread. The film earned its TV-MA rating for good reason.
By shying away from the horror classification, The Time That Remains risks alienating both audiences—it’s too dark and violent for pure romance fans, but too focused on melodramatic love story for horror enthusiasts. It’s caught in an uncomfortable middle ground.
The Historical and Cultural Layers
What I do genuinely appreciate about the film is how it uses its vampire mythology to comment on Philippine history. Adolfo Alix Jr. has built a reputation as a socially conscious filmmaker—his 2013 film Death March competed at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, and his work consistently engages with historical trauma and contemporary social issues.
In The Time That Remains, vampirism becomes a metaphor that shifts across different historical periods. During Spanish colonization, it represents the foreign invasion and cultural transformation of indigenous peoples. During the Japanese occupation (where much of the flashback story takes place), vampirism becomes a tool of survival and rebellion—Matias uses his powers to protect Lilia and her family. In the contemporary timeline, the film apparently blurs the line between vampires and drug dealers, critiquing outdated generational attitudes and the inability to accept change.
The film also draws heavily from Kalinga culture and their stories of resilience and survival across generations. This thematic foundation, according to the filmmakers, was deliberately chosen to ground the supernatural elements in something authentically Filipino rather than simply transplanting Western vampire mythology wholesale.
Writer Mixkaela Villalon reportedly spent over a decade developing this script with Alix Jr., specifically tasked with creating a vampire romance that felt authentically Filipino rather than a Western rehash. In that respect, they succeeded—this doesn’t feel like a Filipino-language remake of Twilight or Interview with the Vampire. It has its own cultural specificity, its own relationship to history and folklore.
Technical Craftsmanship
I need to give credit where it’s due: the film is beautifully shot. The cinematography captures Baguio’s ethereal, fog-laden atmosphere perfectly, creating a Gothic sensibility that feels appropriate for vampire mythology while remaining distinctly Filipino. The production design, the costume work spanning different time periods, the use of natural lighting and shadow—these are all strong elements.
The cast generally performs well with the material they’re given. Bing Pimentel as the elderly Lilia carries much of the emotional weight, and she does it with grace. Jasmine Curtis-Smith plays the younger Lilia and handles the difficult task of portraying innocence gradually giving way to trauma and then deep, complicated love.
Carlo Aquino as Matias is a mixed bag. Multiple reviews have noted that he’s effective during the warrior sequences, when he’s dealing with the physical, visceral aspects of vampirism. But in the quieter, more intimate romantic scenes, something doesn’t quite land. Perhaps it’s the script, perhaps it’s the direction, but those moments that should devastate emotionally often feel flat.
Beauty Gonzalez as Isabela, the present-day nurse dealing with her own romantic trauma, provides an interesting mirror to Lilia’s story. The film uses Isabela’s arc—she’s lost faith in love after an abusive relationship—to frame Lilia’s choice to share her story. It’s meant to be redemptive: Lilia proves that even without immortality, decades of genuine companionship can be profound and meaningful.
Loose Threads and Unresolved Mysteries
One of my biggest frustrations with The Time That Remains is how many plot threads are simply left dangling. The film introduces intriguing characters and concepts, then seemingly forgets about them.
Take Ami, played by Cristine Reyes. She runs the Black Cat Tattoo Studio, which serves as a front for a marijuana-blood bag exchange business. Ami is a vampire who trades blood bags to Matias in exchange for weed, allowing him to avoid killing humans. It’s a fascinating arrangement that raises so many questions: How did Ami become a vampire? What’s her backstory? How long has she been operating in Baguio? What’s her relationship to the wider vampire world?
The film gives us none of this. When the police raid her tattoo studio, Ami escapes, and that’s the last we see or hear of her. She’s simply gone, no resolution, no explanation of what happens next. For a character who played such a crucial role in Matias’s survival strategy—providing him with an ethical alternative to murder—her abrupt exit from the narrative feels like a massive oversight.
Then there’s the Spanish vampire who turned Matias in 1570. This is arguably the most important figure in the entire story—he’s patient zero, the one who brought vampirism to the Philippines as a literal embodiment of colonial invasion. We see him in the flashback, we understand his significance as a metaphor, but then… nothing. What happened to him? Is he still around? Did he turn others? Did Matias ever encounter him again across the centuries?
These aren’t minor details—they’re foundational to understanding the film’s mythology and the scope of vampirism in this world. The fact that the screenplay completely ignores these threads suggests either significant editing cuts or a lack of interest in worldbuilding beyond what’s necessary for the central romance.
The Problematic Elements
Beyond the structural issues, I need to address something that bothered me while watching: there are some uncomfortable similarities between the Lilia/Matias relationship and the infamous Renesmee/Jacob imprinting from Twilight. Matias first meets Lilia when she’s a young child in 1941—he’s a shapeshifting cat, and they form a bond. He becomes her protector, her friend. Then, as she grows older, this relationship transforms into romantic love.
The film handles this more maturely than Twilight did—there’s no explicit “imprinting” or predestination, and the romance doesn’t develop until Lilia is an adult. But the foundation of their relationship still involves an immortal being bonding with a child, then eventually becoming her lover. It’s… uncomfortable.
Additionally, there’s a rape-revenge subplot in 1954 where Lilia is sexually assaulted, and Matias avenges her by killing her attackers. The aftermath of this—where Lilia is accused of being a witch by her community, and her mother commits suicide after seeing Lilia with Matias in his cat form, believing her daughter has become “Satan’s wife”—is genuinely tragic and historically reflective of how sexual assault victims are often blamed and ostracized.
But the way the film uses this trauma as a catalyst for the romance, as the moment that fundamentally binds Matias and Lilia together, feels exploitative. It’s a common trope in romantic narratives—trauma bonding presented as the foundation of deep love—but it’s one that deserves more critical examination than the film provides.
The Bittersweet Ending
Without spoiling too much, the film ends on what’s described as a “bittersweet” note. Lilia, faced with the choice of becoming a vampire to stay with Matias forever, chooses mortality. She chooses to grow old, to experience the natural progression of human life, rather than exist in eternal stasis.
This choice is meant to be profound—it’s saying that a finite life filled with genuine love is more meaningful than an endless existence. That the “time that remains” for mortals is what gives life its value and urgency. It’s a rejection of the vampire fantasy that so much of the genre promotes.
I appreciate this thematically. It’s a mature, thoughtful conclusion that goes against the typical vampire romance ending where the mortal becomes immortal to be with their love forever. But emotionally? After two hours of watching this doomed romance unfold, the ending felt less profound and more predictable. The film telegraphs where it’s going early enough that the impact is diminished.
Final Thoughts: Admirable Ambition, Uneven Execution
Look, I can’t say I loved The Time That Remains. It was too slow, too drenched in romantic melodrama, and too caught between genres for my personal taste. But I also can’t dismiss it entirely.
What Alix Jr. and Villalon have created is genuinely ambitious. This is Filipino cinema engaging with international genre conventions while maintaining cultural specificity. It’s a film that trusts its audience to sit with slow reveals and atmospheric world-building. It’s tackling heavy themes about colonialism, historical trauma, mortality, and the nature of love across impossible distances.
The problem is that ambition doesn’t always translate to execution. The pacing issues, the uneven performances, the tonal inconsistencies between Gothic horror and sappy romance—these undermine what could have been a truly great film.
Is it worth watching? If you’re interested in Filipino cinema, if you’re fascinated by how different cultures adapt and transform vampire mythology, if you have patience for slow-burn romantic dramas—then yes, absolutely. This is an important film in the context of Filipino genre cinema, a step forward in production values and international ambitions.
But if you’re looking for something that consistently maintains tension, that balances its horror and romance elements effectively, or that knows when to move its plot forward—you might find yourself, like me, checking the runtime and wishing for a tighter edit.
The Time That Remains is currently streaming on Netflix. Despite my criticisms, I’m glad it exists, glad that Filipino filmmakers are taking these kinds of creative swings on international platforms. I just wish the execution matched the ambition.
Rating: 6.5/10 — Visually striking and culturally significant, but hampered by pacing issues and an overreliance on romantic melodrama that will alienate as many viewers as it attracts.
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