Huwad (2024)
Drama · Romance · Fantasy
| Director | Reynold Giba |
| Cast | Azi Acosta, Aerol Carmelo, Chloe Jenna |
| Screenplay | Dustin Celestino |
| Language | Tagalog / Filipino |
| Streaming | Vivamax (VMX) |
The premise genuinely got me.
Wife finds out husband is cheating. Goes to the local folk healer. Gets a love potion. And then — the potion works on literally everyone except the husband she made it for.
That’s a good setup. Actually funny on paper. Lots of directions you could take it. Chaos, comedy, dark drama, all three at once. Huwad had real potential sitting right there in its own premise.
And then it kind of didn’t know what to do with it.
What Actually Happens
Romina (Azi Acosta) is a married woman living in a small Filipino town. Her husband is cheating on her. It’s not subtle. Everyone around her seems to know before she fully admits it to herself.
When she finally can’t ignore it anymore, she doesn’t confront him. Doesn’t leave. Goes to the local healer instead and comes back with a love potion meant to bring her husband back to her.
Here’s the thing though. The potion works. Just not on him.
Suddenly men around Romina are noticing her differently. Wanting her. Coming to her. And her husband — the one person the whole thing was supposed to fix — is completely unaffected. Still out there doing what he was doing before.
It’s a classic irony setup. The kind of story where the solution creates a completely different problem. And for maybe the first thirty minutes Huwad actually plays with that idea in an interesting way. Romina’s confusion about what’s happening, the unexpected attention she’s getting, the slow realization that maybe the potion isn’t the problem — it’s interesting.
Then the film starts leaning harder into the R-18 content and the story takes a backseat.
Which is fine for what this is. But it means the premise — the actually good idea at the center of this film — never gets the development it deserved.
Azi Acosta Carries More Than She Should Have To
Romina is not an easy character. She’s not supposed to be simply sympathetic — she’s desperate in a specific way that makes her do things you don’t entirely agree with, and she’s simultaneously a victim of her husband’s behavior and someone who’s making increasingly complicated choices of her own.
Azi Acosta handles that better than the script actually supports. There are moments in the first half where you genuinely feel what Romina is going through — the humiliation of being cheated on, the desperation of wanting something back that maybe was never real, the strange disorientation of suddenly being wanted by everyone except the person you chose.
Those moments work. Acosta makes them work.
The problem is the second half doesn’t give her the same material. The dramatic grounding starts to dissolve and what’s left is mostly surface. She’s still doing what she can with it but you feel the film losing interest in Romina as a person around the same time it starts prioritizing other things.
Aerol Carmelo as the husband does what the role needs — he’s convincingly selfish and not particularly interesting, which is accurate for this type of character but doesn’t give you much to work with dramatically. Chloe Jenna in a supporting role brings energy whenever she’s on screen. Always reliable in these Vivamax productions.
Reynold Giba’s Direction — Competent But Cautious
Giba knows how to make a Vivamax film. The pacing is functional, the visual style is clean, nothing is egregiously poorly shot. For a streaming production in this genre it looks fine.
But fine is the problem. Huwad’s premise had the potential for something genuinely playful and strange — a film that leaned into its folk magic premise with real commitment, that let the absurdity breathe, that trusted its audience to enjoy something a bit weirder than the standard infidelity drama.
Giba doesn’t quite go there. The direction is safe. The tone never fully commits to the chaotic comedy the premise suggests or the emotional depth the drama needs. It sits somewhere in the middle and does both things adequately without doing either thing well.
The Premise Problem
This is the thing that genuinely frustrated me about Huwad.
Love potion works on everyone except the husband. That’s your film. That’s where everything interesting lives — in the chaos of unwanted attention, in Romina having to navigate something she completely didn’t ask for, in the irony of getting everything the potion was supposed to do just aimed at entirely the wrong people.
The film touches that idea. It doesn’t dig into it.
By the time the third act arrives, the love potion element has almost become background noise. The film wraps things up with a fairly standard infidelity drama resolution that could have come from any of a dozen other Vivamax films. The thing that made this one different — the actual hook — kind of just gets left behind.
That’s a shame. Because there’s a genuinely good film sitting inside this premise that a more adventurous script would have found.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Azi Acosta gives more than the script deserves — she’s genuinely good here
- The premise is original and actually funny on paper
- First thirty minutes set up something interesting
- Chloe Jenna is reliably entertaining in her scenes
- Clean production values for a Vivamax streaming release
Cons:
- The actually good premise gets abandoned in the second half
- Tone never commits — not funny enough, not dramatic enough
- Resolution is generic Vivamax infidelity drama — nothing special
- Aerol Carmelo’s husband character has no depth whatsoever
- Feels like a missed opportunity from start to finish
Worth Watching?
Honestly — maybe, if you’re already a Vivamax subscriber and you’ve run out of the better stuff.
Huwad isn’t a bad film. It’s a frustrating one. There’s a much better version of this story sitting inside the premise and the film never quite gets there. Azi Acosta deserved a sharper script. The audience deserved a film that committed to its own weirdness.
What we got is fine. Watchable. Forgettable.
Sometimes that’s just how it goes.
Our Rating: 2.5 / 5 ⭐
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is Huwad (2024) about?
Huwad follows Romina, a wife who discovers her husband is cheating on her. She gets a love potion from the town’s folk healer — but the potion starts working on every man around her except the husband it was meant for.
What does Huwad mean in Filipino?
Huwad means “fake” or “false” in Filipino. The film was originally titled Gayuma — which means love potion — before being retitled Huwad for its Vivamax release.
Who stars in Huwad (2024)?
Azi Acosta plays Romina, the lead character. Aerol Carmelo plays her cheating husband. Chloe Jenna plays a supporting role. The film was directed by Reynold Giba.
Where can I watch Huwad (2024)?
Huwad is available to stream on Vivamax, also known as VMX. It was released on the platform on June 28, 2024.
Is Huwad suitable for all ages?
No. Huwad carries an R-18 rating and contains mature content, nudity and adult themes. It is strictly for viewers aged 18 and above.
How long is Huwad (2024)?
The runtime is 1 hour and 38 minutes (98 minutes).
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