Kenneth Dagatan, the award-winning director behind the scary films ‘Sanctissima’ and ‘In My Mother’s Skin’, discusses creating atmospheric horror movies that will haunt you for longer
Filipino horror has long been associated with aswangs—shape-shifting, evil creatures illustrated in local folklore—in the dark, ghosts with hair over their faces or spirits that leap out at you in convenient flickers of lightning. But director and screenwriter Kenneth Dagatan is not interested in following the handbook.
“I thought about how to make horror films that scare viewers without using any jump scares,” Dagatan says. He’s been doing exactly that since Sanctissima (2015), his breakthrough short film that introduced the Philippines—and later the world—to his quietly disturbing, emotionally layered style.
The film, which he now credits as the moment he found his “voice”, was never meant to be revolutionary. He simply wanted to make something terrifying. But what emerged was a visceral slow burn, drenched in mood and atmosphere, revealing a signature style he didn’t even know he had yet.
A VHS childhood
Kenneth Dagatan speaks to a horror and fantasy film fans at the Slash Film Fest in Vienna (Photo: Kenneth Dagatan)
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It may be hard to imagine a filmmaker who now screens at the Sundance Film Festival and streams on huge platforms like Amazon Prime was once a kid whose world was shaped by exactly two movies: The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995). “That was my childhood,” Dagatan recalls with a laugh. His father, a seaman, had a modest VHS collection and it was enough to spark something in him.
No one else in his family was particularly artistic. His mother was a nurse, his brother went into business, but young Dagatan was mesmerised by films and music. “Music was the first art form I fell in love with,” he says. Even before his teenage years, he was already teaching classmates and even teachers how to play the guitar, a skill he taught himself with the help YouTube and a few tips from his cousin.
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That self-taught, scrappy approach became a recurring theme. A high school assignment required him to make a horror short but he didn’t know the first thing about filming or editing. Fortunately, he had access to a Sony video recorder and a brother who could show him the basics in filming and editing. “When my brother taught me how to edit, that was the first time I saw the magic of cinema. It was like watching a magic show.”
From there, he was hooked.
