“Bliss” is a film whose pleasures aren’t immediate. It isn’t as emotionally rousing as “Heneral Luna” or “Sana Dati,” whose themes of nationalism or romantic love, respectively, are things that provoke effortlessly. “Bliss” seems to be more cerebral, a work that forces its viewers to think before they feel. It is a commentary veiled as a horror, a critique of the onerous world of art and entertainment whose abusive behavior towards its workers is akin to the ones committed by sex offenders, where routine and repetition are keys to tolerance, to acceptance, and to further and perhaps more prevalent abuse. The nightmare simply cycles. We either wake up or die, or go to the nearest Family Mart for that much-needed respite.

– Oggs Cruz, CNN Philippines

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