Coming Soon: Motel Acacia

Set in a fictional snowy United States, the film is about a young Filipino man who is groomed by his tyrannical Caucasian father to take over Motel Acacia which is tasked with exterminating immigrants by the government through a bed haunted with the spirit of a Filipino tree demon, that eats men and impregnates women.

Motel Acacia is co-written by Bradley and award-winning producer Bianca Balbuena.

Motel Acacia is Bradley’s sophomore feature, following his debut film, Singing in Graveyards, which starred Pepe Smith.

JC Santos and Agot Isidro join the international cast that includes Belgian actor Jan Bijvoet (Borgman, Peaky Blinders), Malaysia’s Bront Palarae (Satan’s Slaves), Thailand’s Vithaya Pansringarm (Only God Forgives), Australia’s Talia Zucker (Lake Mungo, Ned Kelly) and US/Australia’s Will Jaymes (Beast).

“Besides the mythological part of the film or the horror elements of the film, it’s also really about the themes we wanted to talk about,” Liew said during the movie’s media conference on Tuesday at Quezon City.

The film, he said, talks of “the present state of the world that we’re living in, how we become desensitized to killing, how we’ve got this big immigration issue across the world.”

Liew added how “the horror element, the horror genre, in the way of storytelling is just medium to say what we really want to say and to invoke questions to the people watching this film.”

Motel Acacia is targeting a 2019 release and has done first leg of shooting here in the Philippines and will resume second leg of  shooting out of the country.