For Genus Pan Lav Diaz abandons - at least in part - that political dimension that represented the stage of much of his cinema (think, for example, of Evolution of a Filipino Family, of Melancholia, of Norte, the end of history and a Season of the devil) to no longer address the tormented Filipino spirit but, starting from this, explore that of the human being in general: violence, oppression and death - recurring elements in Diaz's filmography - are not here the brushstrokes that portray the tormented history of the Philippines but become constitutive elements of man as an animal (although, a bit like what happened in Journey to Tokyo by Ozu Yasujiro, History makes itself felt off-screen, as a side dish: specifically, there is some reference to the Japanese invasion).
The result is a film which, starting from urgent assumptions - especially considering contemporary society -, concentrates its narrative in a "contained" form, considering the Diazian average, which does not allow the director to fully explore the themes addressed with his typical care: although aesthetically it is possible to find a return to the style of his masterpieces of the past, a raw and organic style which, recently, had been slightly neglected in favor of a more glossy and clean aesthetic (emblematic, in this sense, is the "colossal" Lullaby to the sorrowful mystery), narratively the director stumbles upon a deleterious synthesis which clips the wings of a dry, minimal plot which would have required, almost paradoxically , the classic Diazian duration to penetrate the soul of the spectator.