Content warning: This article contains discussions of rape.
The Philippine justice system is not designed for ordinary people like Lilia Capistrano. It is designed for men like Guilly Vega — men who wear their wealth like armor, who turn police officers into errand boys, who treat laws as mere suggestions. In Dan Villegas’s “Uninvited,” Lilia does not turn to the courts when her daughter Lily is raped and murdered by businessman Guilly. Instead, armed with nothing but her grief and a fake identity, she walks into Guilly’s birthday party with a plan to make him and his accomplices pay.
At its core, “Uninvited” paints a portrait of a justice system so broken that vigilante retribution becomes the only option. It dares to imagine what happens when victims reclaim power in a society where the rich routinely escape accountability. But the film’s reluctance to explicitly confront systemic issues that enable the wealthy’s crimes ultimately undermines its central message.
The film explores rape not simply as an issue of desire but of power. Beyond sexual gratification, Guilly rapes to exert power over people, even taking his victims’ belongings as trophies. His need to dominate permeates every facet of his relationships. As the Vega patriarch, he exercises sexual, emotional, and economic control over his wife and daughter, trapping them in his orbit. As a boss, he treats his lackeys as easily disposable once he senses a hint of disloyalty.
The movie also depicts rape as being enabled by intersecting systems of power. Guilly and his men are implied to have bribed state actors like police and army officials to conceal their crimes. They buy the silence of the victims’ loved ones, exploiting their lack of faith in a justice system that historically bends to the will of the rich. Even the family, as an institution represented by Guilly’s wife and daughter, is complicit in and subjected to the patriarch’s rampage.
For many Filipinas, this is not fiction but fact. The Philippine Commission on Women acknowledges that many victims do not seek justice against their perpetrators due to a culture of silence and shame, and their low expectations of our legal system to expeditiously deliver justice for ordinary citizens. A 2022 report by the Philippine General Hospital’s Child Protection Unit also revealed that child sexual abuse in domestic settings is severely underreported.
For ordinary people like Lilia, pursuing justice outside the legal system might feel like the only option left. “Uninvited’s” most cathartic moments come when she finally eliminates the perpetrators of her daughter’s rape, offering a rare glimpse of justice for victims who are often denied it in reality. This mirrors real-world cases such as in 2021 when a rape victim’s family, abandoned by the state’s legal system, turned to the New People’s Army’s revolutionary court which ultimately sentenced the rapist to death.
But these strengths may be overshadowed by the film’s graphic depiction of rape, which, while aiming to confront viewers with the crime’s horrors, risks veering into sensationalism. Mike de Leon’s 1981 award-winning crime thriller “Kisapmata,” for example, effectively explores similar themes of sexual violence without any rape scene. Beyond its intelligent use of set architecture, dialogue, and body language to establish a restricting context of abuse, “Kisapmata” trusts the audience to believe the protagonist’s victimization.
Lilia’s triumph is also limited by the film’s hesitation to confront the extensive systems of impunity that enable their crimes. The film misses the opportunity to advocate for a collective approach to ending sexual violence and the systems that enable it.
The revelation that Red, an army colonel and former lackey of Guilly, aided Lilia’s revenge further complicates the film’s core critique. The military, an institution with a documented history of violence and impunity, is an improbable ally in a story about vigilante justice for victims denied by state institutions. By positioning a figure like Red as a key player in Lilia's success, “Uninvited” risks whitewashing an institution that has long been complicit in the very crimes it seeks to critique.
Despite these stumbles, “Uninvited’s” narrative of justice gained beyond the bounds of the law is crucial, especially at a time when forms of struggle that recognize the incorrigibility of our legal system’s bias for the rich are demonized by the state. Artists owe it to the marginalized to radically imagine a world where they attain justice, and their perpetrators and the systems complicit in their crimes are held into account. ●
