Finally watched Maledicto after endorsing it more than a year ago for its take on misdiagnosing drug addiction and schizophrenia as diabolic possession, on GMA's Mars. The direction, cinematography, and special effects are excellent--except that there are times when the lower third of the screen seems deliberately defocused--but the screenplay is weak, contrived, and derivative of other movies on exorcism, and the dialogue is stilted. Most of the scenes are merely expository and do not push the premise forward. The real movie, as a matter of fact, begins only after 42 minutes. Whenever that is the case, everyone's performance is seriously affected. For one, it was extremely difficult to locate Tom Rodriguez's English in any known culture or subculture.

I am beginning to have problems with horror stories heavily peppered with Catholicism. In the end everything comes across as yin and yang, and it seems that one cannot exist without the other. 

The production design also leaves much to be desired. Most of the blood looks like Chinese hot sauce. Couldn't stand that necklace of thread spools pretending to be vertebrae round Liza Lorena's neck. As a matter of fact couldn't stand her entire Conan the Barbarian ritual outfit either. The scenes with priests make too much effort to appear as though they were in the Vatican--and are ruined by the placement of santos that seem to have been purchased on Evangelista Street. Too many cheap kraft folders were being shuffled around. And that long-haired devil in black sweatshirt and jeans was always trying to look like he just stepped out of Twilight.

The best movie on exorcism I've seen thus far remains The Rite, which stars Anthony Hopkins.