Feng Shui 2004

Joy Ramirez, Kris Aquino, finds a mysterious bagua mirror tucked away in a passenger’s bag on a crowded bus. At nearby Aling Biring’s bakery, the elderly shopkeeper, Luz Fernandez as Aling Biring, tells her to keep the mirror and display it to invite fortune into the home, a nod to feng shui beliefs. With that permission and promise, Joy carries the mirror back to her gated subdivision and places it at the front door, hoping for nothing more than a bit of good luck for her family.

Instantly, opportunities seem to bloom. A friend named Alice helps Joy secure a promotion, and Joy also wins a supermarket prize. The small windfall feels like a sign that the mirror’s presence is more than mere superstition. But the next morning, a newspaper headline unsettles Joy: Evart Mendoza, the man who left the mirror for her, has died after being run over by a Rabbit Liner bus, and he was born in the year of the Rabbit. The strange timing of luck and loss begins to creep into Joy’s life, followed by a fresh shock—Aling Biring herself dies from leptospirosis, and her birth year is the year of the Rat. The neighborhood’s calm starts to fracture as Joy’s husband, Inton, and their neighbor Billy alert her to unsettling events swirling around her house.

Joy starts to be haunted by the lingering presence of the mirror’s victims: the ghosts of Mang Nestor, the old tricycle driver who was stabbed to death at a cockfight, along with the lingering echoes of Biring, Evart, and a veiled woman. The fear intensifies when Joy travels to see Evart’s widow, Lily Mendoza, Cherry Pie Picache who first found the bagua in a house she was selling. Lily explains the mirror’s tragic arc: it brings luck only at the cost of a life after each stroke of fortune, and the one who tries to dispose of it only hastens the curse. Lily pleads with Joy to return the mirror, but Joy refuses and steadies herself for what comes next.

After Joy inherits a late client’s estate, a local security guard who had checked Joy’s house died soon after glimpsing the bagua. The death comes from a snakebite, and the guard’s birth year is the year of the Snake, sealing the link between fortune and death that threads through the house. Alarm bells sound louder, and Joy, along with her friend Alice and their psychic ally Thelma, seek the counsel of a local geomancer, Hsui Liao, Joonee Gamboa. In calm, measured tones, Hsui Liao reveals a history that stretches back to Shanghai’s elite families. The bagua once belonged to a wealthy clan during the Qing Dynasty and into the Republican era. During the Chinese Civil War, the family fled, leaving behind a sisterly figure nicknamed “Lotus Feet,” who could not escape due to the brutal foot-binding traditions. Her servants joined the Chinese Communist Party and burned her at the stake. As she died, she took the bagua with her and placed a curse on it, stealing the reflections of anyone who gazes into the mirror.

Alice’s presence in Joy’s life becomes a turning point. Joy recalls that Alice had looked into the mirror earlier when she visited Joy’s home—Alice is born in the year of the Horse. The truth begins to widen the rift as Joy confronts Inton about a potential affair with his former lover Dina, Jenny Miller. Dina becomes a new thread in the tapestry of danger, and the couple’s fragile equilibrium is shaken further when Alice is revealed to be the next target. Alice is assaulted by a drunk neighbor and dies after tumbling from a window onto a stack of Red Horse Beer crates, a death that cements the mirror’s grisly pattern of “luck” at terrible cost. The spirits sharpen their hold on Joy’s home, and a sense of inevitability settles over the family as the living begin to fear the dead.

Joy, Thelma, and Alice press on with the geomancer’s counsel. They learn that the mirror’s curse is tethered to the reflective moment—the moment a person looks into it, a soul may be claimed if fortune tilts toward a fatal outcome. The danger deepens when Joy realizes that Alice had glimpsed the mirror on a prior visit to Joy’s house, and that the people closest to her life—Inton, Dina, and the neighborhood’s fragile order—are all potential targets. To respond, Joy and her allies seek a way to break the curse: reject any further offers of luck and ultimately destroy the mirror.

The investigation intensifies as Joy’s circle encounters more victims. Dina’s husband Louie, Nonie Buencamino as Louie, returns home bearing a dog tattoo on his right shoulder that marks him as born in the year of the Dog. He shoots Dina and Inton before turning the gun on himself, a chilling murder-suicide that underscores the mirror’s lethal pull. Thelma drives Denton Ramirez, John Manalo, and Ingrid Ramirez, Julianne Gomez, toward safety, but a looming freight truck full of livestock brings a stark omen about the year of the Rooster for Ingrid and the year of the Ox for Denton and Thelma. Thelma barely avoids a fatal collision, yet the sense of a life cut short remains.

Back in Joy’s house, Lily’s lawyer arrives with an offer to recover the bagua for money, but Joy remains steadfast and refuses. In a final, perilous act, she destroys the mirror. The Thelma-led trio—Thelma, Denton, and Ingrid—arrive in time to witness a grim revelation: Joy’s vision of a peaceful end gives way to the truth that the family had already perished in a road accident earlier, and Joy’s own husband appears in a spectral reunion with their children as she screams in horror.

In the quiet after the storm, a new family moves nearby. Their twin daughters, drawn by curiosity, wander into Joy’s old home and discover the restored bagua. The Lotus Lady, silent witness to centuries of longing and loss, watches from a window as the cycle of fortune and death seems poised to begin again, ready to begin anew with the next family drawn into its cursed call.