The Quiet Ripples in a Marriage
Salisihan may have arrived quietly on streaming platforms, but it felt like a confession whispered in the dark. As a Filipino drama under an hour, it doesn’t rely on shocks or spectacle. Instead, it lingers in the slow ache of guilt, silence, and the small betrayals that nestle in the corners of every long-term relationship.
The main characters are Dan and Anna, a married couple whose seemingly stable world shatters when a pregnant woman shows up on Dan’s doorstep claiming that he is the father. What comes next is not a storm of shouting or outrageous melodrama, but a silent unfolding. Director Iar Arondaing doesn’t capture infidelity the way other storytellers do — there are no chaotic hotel rooms or tragic car crashes. Everything is expressed in half-glances and muted tones — the type of discomfort that silence begets.
The action mainly unfolds in a single residence. There are no elaborate exteriors and no bustling crowds, just three people orbiting one another: a woman who claims to possess the truth, the other who is hopelessly eager to believe otherwise, and a man whose serenity seems, inappropriately, too practiced to be innocent. It is not the act of betrayal that is of real consequence but the aftermath; the fading resonance of love after the final breath of trust has been exhaled.
Whispers Before the Release
A section of the audience preoccupied with Vivamax dramas started their online speculations, sparked by the release of the trailer. The title Salisihan, a Tagalog word that is loosely translated as ‘cheating’ or ‘crossing over’, served as a preliminary clue, but the teaser’s tone also strongly suggested something: it was subdued, slow, and eerie in its atmosphere.
Social media threads were filled with story guesses. One theory was that the pregnant woman was lying and was using the pregnancy as emotional blackmail. The opposite was also proposed, speculating that Dan had lost touch with reality and that the film was heading in a psychological or supernatural direction.
Because of the marketing — dim lighting and close-ups of eyes and hands — some people wondered if Salisihan would have a horror twist. Was the pregnant woman a ghost of a past sin or a real woman? Did the baby symbolize guilt instead of life?
These fan theories provided a unique aura of intrigue for the mystery prior to the movie’s release. This was not just another movie about infidelity, it was a story that promised moral discomfort.
When Salisihan was available to stream, the story was much simpler and depressing than the audience was prepared for. There were no reveals of deeply hidden supernatural elements. The horror was simply human.
Dan’s calmness in the face of accusation was a prevailing conflict in the film. Another was Anna’s slow, almost reluctant breakdown. The pregnant woman, Sophie, was not written as a villain. She seemed lost — part manipulator, part truth-teller, part mirror to reflect what Dan and Anna had become: two people pretending to be whole.
The film is deliberate and patient in its pacing. It allows silence to stretch until it becomes unbearable. Each domestic space — the kitchen, the bedroom, the front door — becomes an emotional snare. At one point, Anna stands in front of a mirror and just breathes; that moment, which had no dialogue, became the focus of numerous fan conversations for its singularity.
People started to rewatch the film to search for minute clues — a here, a nervous gesture there. Some argued that Anna already knew the truth before Sophie came and that she invited the confrontation out of guilt. Others argued that Sophie might not even be pregnant and that she could be an invention of Dan’s memory.
This is what Salisihan did best: it made people talk about what wasn’t shown.
The Minds behind the Stillness
Director Iar Arondaing, known for her minimalist style, collaborated with writers Kiko Abrillo and Rijel Reyes to create a chamber piece rather than a conventional love triangle. Arondaing said in interviews that she wanted to “make silence the fourth character.” Each pause, each held breath, was crafted to speak louder than any line of dialogue.
The cast had to adapt to the intimacy of the lens while filming at actual residences instead of sound stages. The production team maintained the realistic approach by using natural lighting and heightening the sense of discomfort and tension. Actors recalled instances during the tight closet scene where the character and the actor personally began to overlap. One actor even described the emotional weight they carried home after a long shoot as a feeling of confinement within that house of secrets.
There were early whispers of filmed alternate endings. One of the alternate endings reported early on had Anna driving Sophie away, only to learn of her husband’s deception through a voicemail. Another alternate ending was said to incorporate a quiet Dan staying with Anna, leading to a pretended reconciliation. The film then, chose to adopt ambiguity, ending on a silence that resonated with a lack of closure.
This ambiguity of the ending split test audience members. Some demanded closure and the others appreciated the truthfulness of the ambiguity, that some betrayals in life do not have neat endings.
Enduring Fan Theories
After the release of Salisihan, it became a site of interpretation. The online community attempted to make sense of the details. Why does Dan keep looking distractedly at his phone even after all the truth is supposedly revealed? Why does Anna never touch Sophie’s belly?
One particularly popular theory speculated that Sophie was not real at all and that she was simply a manifestation of Anna’s paranoia. In this interpretation, the baby bump was a metaphor for a growing fear hiding inside her.
Another theory advanced the idea that the entire film was Dan’s perspective and that it was a guilt-ridden dream prior to him confessing. The dream theory fans pointed to the surreal lighting in a number of shots and the way sound seems to fade when he is alone.
Interestingly, Arondaing and the cast never confirmed or denied any of the theories. In one of the press Q&As, the director simply smiled and said, “Maybe the truth depends on who’s watching." That fueled the speculation even more.
Behind the Camera, Beyond the Screen
Reportedly, production for Salisihan took just over two weeks — with a small crew, long hours, and a great deal of emotional rehearsal. To facilitate the actors staying within the emotional continuum, scenes were shot in chronological order. This choice resulted in a performance style that was raw and evolving — you can sense, and not merely as acting, fatigue ensue as a lived emotion.
The film did not have elaborate sets, nor were there any extravagant tricks in the post production. The film also relied on the unsophisticated use of sound — the buzz of a ceiling fan, floorboard creaking, and the distant sound of rain — to echo the characters’ escalating distress.
The film crew member who stated that the hardest part was not the shoot itself but the silence in between was also the most reflective. ‘After a particularly heavy scene, she said, ‘Everyone went quiet for minutes. It was as if the absence of sound was listening.’
A Story That Refuses to End
’Salisihan’ is now part of the canon of quiet, slow, and disturbingly intimate Filipino indie drama. While it did not set box office records, it did not silence in the public’s discourse long after it left the theater.
This project became a defining one for the actors; a test of how far they could stretch emotion with close to nothing — no elaborate dialogues, no background music to support them.
For the audience, it became a mirror — one that captures not infidelity, but the little daily betrayals we all commit of pretending all is well.
Salisihan begins as a story about the claim of a stranger. It concludes as something more haunting — a portrait of people who realize too late that silence is more powerful than lies.