When Mila (Charo Santos) confesses to her domineering ex-police sergeant father Dadong (Vic Silayan) that she’s pregnant, he allows her to marry under the condition that the couple move into the family home. Claustrophobia sets in immediately, and the perverse lengths Mila’s father will go to keep the family under his thumb are revealed. The film meticulously tightens the noose around its characters’ necks until the outcome feels inevitable—culminating in a brutal, unflinching portrait of the horrors of patriarchy at its most pathological. Based on a viral true-crime report, Mike De Leon’s disturbing psychological-horror masterpiece, known as a landmark of Filipino cinema, updates the story into a chilling allegory for Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship. The film originally premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 1982, where De Leon became just the second filmmaker to premiere two films at the festival in the same year (the second film, Batch 81, can be seen on 1/29 & 2/1).  In memory of  Mike De Leon.