Trese
Netflix’s Trese opens with a commuter train weaving through Manila skyscrapers, which then loses power in the middle of its elevated tracks. As passengers vacate the train cars and are forced to walk along the tracks, they remark “That’s the third time this month.” Shortly thereafter, they are attacked by red-eyed, fanged humanoid aswang. The cold open is one of the many things I really appreciate about this new animated series—it portrays horrors that are both structural (literally and figuratively) and supernatural.
The six-episode show follows Alexandra Trese, a private detective and enforcer of the peace accord between humans and the creatures of the underworld. It’s got all the good bits of urban fantasy—like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alexandra has her trademark kris, which she uses with great skill to kick monsters’ butts. Like Supernatural and Grimm, it draws upon myths and horror stories and puts a contemporary spin on these otherworldly legends. They’re all Filipino, of course, and to that I say, hell, yeah! It’s about time more people get horrified by the monsters that haunted me in my youth.
Alexandra and her ghostly bodyguards, Crispin and Basilio. My faves.
Like the most effective works of horror and fantasy, Trese asks (sometimes even directly in dialogue)—who are the real monsters here? The tikbalangs, aswangs and other monsters are presented as ruthless gangs, but Alexandra Trese is often pursuing these malevolent creatures as much as she is bringing corrupt humans to some sort of justice. This kind of range is faithful to the source material—a long-running and beloved comics series from the Philippines—which sharply portrays the specific mundane horrors of Manila life.
Trese does all that with gorgeous, stylized art, with a complicated protagonist, and with a deep love for a culture that the world media has not featured much of. I’m obviously biased, being Filipino and being a fan of the original comic, but this show is objectively a frightfully fun watch that I highly recommend.
Got these from back home but some of Trese’s volumes are on bookshop.org, and for non-Filipino speakers out there, never fear—these are in English.
Image credits: Screenshots via Netflix, 2021. Photo from my phone.