“The villa, once beloved, was better left behind in all its tragedies.” You can try to escape a family curse, but in the end the sins of your past will always find you. A young woman named Sophie becomes a reluctant witness to just this sort of Gothic reckoning in The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo, which came out back in November. I loved Victor’s debut sci-fi thriller The Sleepless, so when I heard he was writing a Gothic novel set in his homeland of the Philippines, I knew I had to check it out! The Villa, Once Beloved does a beautiful job of blending classic Gothic tropes with Filipino folklore, a suffocating tropical setting, and the region’s dark history of colonialism and political corruption.
Ethnically Filipino but adopted by a white family as an infant, Sophie has never been to the Philippines. So when her boyfriend Adrian—heir to the wealthy Sepulveda clan—is summoned back to the homeland for his grandfather’s funeral, Sophie jumps at the chance to accompany him, even under such unfortunate circumstances. But the trip feels cursed from the very beginning: as they arrive, a storm builds to a typhoon that ultimately causes mudslides to wipe out the roads, trapping them in the villa and delaying the funeral. Surely, that’s just regular bad luck and nothing to do with the legends of a family curse. But what about the rumors that Don Raul was killed not by a heart attack but by a bangungot—a nightmare made manifest—after weeks of erratic behavior and raving about protecting the family from a corpse-eating demon called a balbal? The longer Sophie stays at Villa Sepulveda, the more she discovers that the family’s veneer of wealth and status is built on a foundation of betrayal, corruption, and decay. Trapped together over Holy Week, events take an unholy turn as the family members bicker, conflicting agendas are pursued, and secrets buried in the past rise again to the surface. The Sepulveda clan has many flaws—they descend from Spanish colonizers, have rubbed elbows with brutal dictators, and lord over the coconut plantation that built their wealth while its laborers suffer in poverty. But can the current generation rise above this legacy, or are they all complicit in the sins that brought on the family curse?
I don’t think I’ve ever before read a horror novel set during Easter. We’ve all seen plenty of horror stories set during Halloween, and Christmas horror has its own little niche—but I’m all for creating a new seasonal subgenre of Easter horror! To be more specific, the novel takes place over the course of Holy Week and the chapters are labeled “Palm Sunday,” “Holy Monday,” “Spy Wednesday,” etc. Both the practical and the religious aspects of the holiday significantly impact the plot. The Philippines are a majority-Catholic country that takes observing Holy Week very seriously. In this instance, the holiday serves to further isolate the Sepulveda household since no laborers are available to clear the roads after the storm and no one is answering their phones in the rare moments when a character is able to get cell service. The older Sepulvedas are devoutly religious, blending Catholicism with their Filipino folk beliefs. They strictly observe the traditions of Holy Week—including a prohibition on holding funerals, meaning Raul’s burial must be further delayed. On the more spiritual side, there is a sense that this is a dangerous and delicate time of year, especially between Good Friday (which commemorates Jesus’s crucifixion) and Easter Sunday (which celebrates his resurrection). As the family’s housekeeper says, “God is dead on those days, and that’s when all the demons come out.” Indeed, the story takes a particularly dark turn on Good Friday and the demons (both internal and external) that haunt the Sepulveda family emerge into the light on Black Saturday. There’s even a nod to Passover—the Jewish holiday which usually coincides with Easter and which Jesus would have been celebrating during the Last Supper. The curse which the Sepulvedas are under is said to manifest as a series of plagues, akin to the Ten Plagues of Egypt that feature in the Passover story. Monster storms, swarms of insects, and unexplained illnesses make a fitting backdrop for a horror story!
Speaking of the family curse, this is one of several classic Gothic tropes that are transposed into this uncommon setting. Frequent readers of Gothic literature will find many aspects of this curse familiar: it was cast upon the family by a woman who had been wronged by them and it serves to visit the “sins of the father” upon the next generations. One character declares that “It’s not the villa that’s cursed, It’s the family”—but like many ancestral homes in Gothic literature, the structure and the family that resides within its walls have become intertwined. A curse on one is a curse on both. This Gothic conception of the curse is also blended with the Filipino notion of gaba, which adds a suggestion of karma or divine retribution. One more classic Gothic trope that the novel plays with is that of the creepy housekeeper. Remedios has worked for the Sepulveda family for many decades and knows all the secrets of the family and the house. Though she doesn’t necessarily come off as creepy—Remedios is perhaps the friendliest and most sympathetic person Sophie encounters in the villa—she does have a tendency to proffer ominous warnings and encourage Sophie to “leave this place” while she still can…
If you enjoy postcolonial Gothic horror like Silvia Moreno Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, you’ll definitely want to check out The Villa, Once Beloved. You could even read it over the week leading up to Easter for an immersive seasonal experience! You can find it on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments! And feel free to suggest more Easter horror, or books set during other unexpected holidays for the genre.
Excellent review of an excellent book! The tropical setting and the monsters from Filipino folklore are really enjoyable as well as enjoyable in the genre.
Your point about the twining (or twinning) of the family and the villa adds to my own understanding. The name Sepulveda itself refers to a certain type of place, too [quoting from Google AI summary]: ‘Sepulveda is a Spanish habitational surname originating from a town in Segovia, Spain, derived from the Latin sepulcrum, meaning “tomb” or “sepulcher”. It refers to someone from this region or a, place with ancient burial sites.’
Or, in this case, not so ancient.
The two central horrors at the root of the curse are quintessentially colonial as well as dictatorial – if the ruling party (with significant non-native ancestry) can do what it wants to preserve its power with impunity, it makes sense that the “strong men” further from the nexus of power would see that as an option to resolve their own “problems.” I know a bit about the desaparecidos in Chile and Argentina but had no idea that it was so prevalent in Filipino history too.
I think the creepy housekeeper trope is a little different in this case because Remedios has a slightly different relationship with the family. I had mixed feelings about the resolution of her history. What did you think of the condemnation of complicity among those less powerful? Many, though not all, are women, too.