Latinoamerican horror

[Fenril]

We already have separate threads for Mexican and Brazilian horror; other Latinoamerican countries have a few horror productions of their own (especially Argentina, through most of their movies are pretty hard to find these days --a shame, really), but only a handful or so, because the local film industry is pretty new in some cases.

So, seen any horror movies from any of these countries and if so, what did you think of them?

[slayrrr666]

Surprisingly, I've caught two, the Columbian At the End of the Spectra and the Argentinean The Appeared. Spectra is probably my favorite of the two, as it's much more like a traditional Hollywood ghost story and has the better hauntings, even though both are pretty good. The Appeared tends to meander around a bit more due to it's length.

[Fenril]

Jun 16, 2011 10:52:11 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

Surprisingly, I've caught two, the Columbian At the End of the Spectra and the Argentinean The Appeared. Spectra is probably my favorite of the two, as it's much more like a traditional Hollywood ghost story and has the better hauntings, even though both are pretty good. The Appeared tends to meander around a bit more due to it's length.

Ah, yes. Those two are fairly recent, so I guess they are easier to find.

Agree with both of your comments: "Al final del espectro" was a good ghost story (and IMHO the scripwriter and producers made a good choice in sticking to a traditional tipe of haunting); "Aparecidos" was okay, but it probably needed some trimming.

A few more:

- Plenilunio. Uruguayan werewolf movie, surprsingly bloody and with some dark comedy woven in. The special effects aren't very good, but since this was a no-budget production, I think everyone involved did a good job. Not to be confused with a more recent Spanish possesion thriller.

- La casa muda [aka The silent house]. Another Uruguayan production, this one with a haunted house and a pseudo-mockumentary approach (it claims to be filmed in "real time"). Well-staged scares here, but I feel it had too many dumb character moves (this is the kind of movie where the characters won't leave a place they know damn well is dangerous).

- El pantano de los cuervos [aka Swamp of the ravens]. Ecuadorian mad-scientist thriller. This one is more memorable for the bizarre theme song "Mujer robot" ["Robot woman"... but the lyrics more or less say "I wish you dead / so I can love you in peace..."] than for the requisite low-budget zombies.

- Ángel negro. Jorge Olguín's directorial debut, and as far as I know the first Chilean horror movie as such. A slasher concerning an old group of friends who are being killed one by one because of an old prank that seemingly cause a classmate's death years ago. Very good low-budget production, with an okay storyline and a simple but effective desing for the killer.

- Sangre eterna [aka Eternal Blood]. Olguín´s second movie can best be summed up in one sentence: Goth vampires fighting shotgun-wielding nuns!. Not quite as good as his previous movie, trough this one had a higher budget and better special effects.

He has since directed the zombie movie "Solos" and the ghost ship movie "Caleuche, el llamado del mar", but I haven't seen either one yet. I really want to see the latter.

I don't know if I should count the Cuban productions "Vampiros en La Habana" and its sequel "¡Más vampiros en La Habana!" as they are animated and more comedy than horror. They are both very good, through, reminded me of the old british cartoon "Count Duckula".

Finally, Argentina has a lot of genre productions, including:

- The gothic Una luz en la ventana ("A light at the window").

- The anthology Obras maestras del terror ("Masterworks of terror"), adapting Edgar Allan Poe tales.

- The modern slasher Habitaciones para turistas [aka Rooms for tourists].

- Emilio Vieyra's exploitation thrillers in the 60's and 70's like the alien invasion film Extraña invasión [aka Stay tuned for terror] or the pseudo-vampire film La bestia desnuda ["The naked beast"].

- Carlos Hugo Christensen's wonderful thrillers, including: Si muero antes de despertar ["If I die before I wake"], No abras nunca esa puerta ["Don't ever open that door"], La muerte camina en la lluvia ["Death walks on the rain"] and the Venezuelan co-production Mariposas negras, aka La balandra Isabel llegó esta tarde ["Black butterflies"].

[slayrrr666]

The more I hear of Sangre Eterna, the more I think it'll be one of my favorite vampire movies. That's a recipe for a good time on my end.

Those Uruguayan ones sound really good, just can't get to them on this side of the world.

[Fenril]

"The silent house" will probably be released soon, because there is already an american remake in the works (of course there is).

"Plenilunio" was released in VHS with subtitles a long time ago; it just might pop up somewhere in the internet (I've seen bits of it popping up in youtube).

"Ángel negro" is available in DVD via Troma, dunno if "Eternal blood" is available as well (I do think you would enjoy these two movies).

[Fenril]

- Los aparecidos [aka The appeared]. Spanish siblings Malena and Pablo travel to Buenos Aires to fix an old testament and to debate when to pull the plug on their comatose father. Pablo finds an old journal in dad's car, which details a gruesome family massacre that took place decades ago, during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. A massacre that seems to repat itself over and over and that is closer to the sibling's family than they would like...

Re-watched this Spain / Argentina coproduction recently. It's mostly a very effective haunting tale with a very real tragedy as the backdrop, with fine performances and special effects. Whilst the movie is maybe a bit repetitive (mostly because it takes our characters a while to figure out they are in a ghost story) it remains worth watching, with a darkly ironic ending.

[slayrrr666]

That's about right, although I came to find the length of this one a little too much for such a story due to the fact that, like you said, it takes a while before the situations reveal themselves to be hauntings rather than just something creepy happening.

[Fenril]

- La casa muda [aka The silent house]. A young girl and her father are hired to clean out an old country house that will soon be put up for sale. As soon as they set down for the night, the girl starts hearing strange noises in the attic. And this is only the beggining of a long night where Laura will find out more than she wanted to about the house, the terrible secret it conceals and what it all has to do with her own past...

Re-watched this Uruguayan production... An horror movie presented in a long single take that while very interesting from a technical point of view , is frustrating in terms of story. In addition to the "dumb character moves" I mentioned, it has a twist ending that, while intriguing, makes a lot of what came before quite the cheat.

It's also a kind of twist that I'm seeing far too often in genre productions since the last ten years or so...

Nevertheless worth a look, as it's just sort enough to never overstay its' welcome.

[slayrrr666]

Can add one more to the list, Albert Pyun's Left for Dead, an Argentine/US co-production about a woman joining up with a posse of female bandits hunting a dangerous criminal that happens to be her husband that they have tracked to a haunted mining town and the resident ghost isn't thrilled with their presence there.

Didn't really get a lot of enjoyment out of this one, mainly due to the fact that there's just not a whole lot of horror elements to go around. Most of the time it's a Western film (it's set in the 1880s, for instance) and while that makes a nice impression as to the uniqueness of the setting, it never really does a lot with it's horror elements. The ghost has a few bits of screen-time, which is fine as it's to dish out the kills or chases around the town, but the majority of the time is spent with the group spouting off at each other or an incredibly lame drama about the relationship between them all, and it just makes it hard to stay invested in the middle. Also problematic is the fact that it tends to show-off some pretty nifty camera tricks that are just plain pointless and irritating, from the slow-motion shots to the never-ending series of flash-effects used during the sequences. Add in more gunshots for the cause of death than anything and it's a disappointing effort overall.

[slayrrr666]

Just caught a new one, The Silent House, last night, and I have some mixed feelings about it. Indeed, the set-up for this in incredibly nice and definitely allows for some genuinely good scares to come forth, most notably a scene where the lights go out and the intermittent flashes of a camera going off provide the only illumination in the sequence, which plays off for a long period of time to make it even more frightening, and with several other rather impressive scenes to make for some a great feel when combined with the creepy house setting. It does have a few major flaws, though, mainly in the final twist revelation that really makes no sense as it just seems shoehorned into the film for no real reason, feels rather lame anyway and has no real connection to the rest of the movie. On top of that, it's short pace and relative lack of explanations make it tough to get into initially. Overall, it's pretty decent but not that spectacular.

[Fenril]

That was my overall impression, too. Mostly an okay "haunted house" (ish) movie, but they really shouldn't have used that twist ending.

On the plus side, this movie was done pretty much without budget (the creators set up a webpage and built the movie with donations); considering that, the result was pretty impressive.

[slayrrr666]

Indeed, if that is the case, that's a fairly good film to come from that, and it's gotten some recognition worldwide, hasn't it? I checked the DVD cover when looking it up and there appeared to be several different accolades on the cover so if that happened from that background, more power to them.

[Fenril]

- Juan de los muertos [aka Juan of the dead]. When La Habana is struck by a zombie plague, ne'er-do-well Juan decides to start a zombie-killing business with his neighborhood gang. They are actually pretty good at it, but it's anybody's guess how long they can survive before killing each other...

The first official horror movie from Cuba. Much like its animated predecesor "Vampires in La Habana!" it manages to incorporate modern horror tropes into a distintly Cuban idiosincracy. There is lots of gore and dark comedy here (it should be noted that said comedy is a lot racier than you would find in an American production). It also has a nice homage to a very notable zombie movie that is neither by Romero nor by Fulci. All in all, a very pleasant surprise.

Between surprisingly good efforts like "Aparecidos", "Al final del espectro", "Somos lo que hay", "Ángel negro" and this one, plus flawed but very interesting entries like "La casa muda" and "Más que a nada en el mundo" [plus several entries from Spain like "[REC]", "El orfanato" and "Los ojos de Julia"], I have to say the 00's and the current decade seem to be bringing quite the reinassance of spanish-spoken horror movies.

[Fenril]

- El buen pedro. A serial killer in Lima is preying on the local prostitutes, much to the chagrin of police detective Gabriel, whose girlfriend is a lot closer to this case than he'd like...

A peruvian killer-thriller that turns to slasher shenanigans in the last act, hence its' inclusion here. This doesn't start very good, as it's the kind of movie that shows a little too much about the killer (here, of the banal evil kind: carving up girls is as much a part of his routine as visits to his therapist or company lunches are) juxtaposed with the detective's rather morose lifestyle (after a while, protracted scenes of him and his girl lying in bed and totally not talking to each other start seeming more than a little repetitive). Once the movie decides to focus on the victims instead, it picks up a lot of steam, with a fairly suspenseful (through extremely brief) chase scene through the woods at night and an utterly brutal mass murder as the climax. Making the women look like, well, like real-life prostitues rather than supermodels pretending to be tramps is a pervasively seedy element (they still manage to remain sympathetic, which is really not the case for any of the men in this story). There is even a not exactly original but cleverly executed twist ending.

The first official horror production from Peru, "Cementerio general" (according to the trailers, I *think* it's going to be a possession movie) is set to debut sometime in the next months. There are a few other local productions with horror elements, including: "Contracorriente" [aka "Undertow"; a ghost movie / gay romance hybrid], "Bajo la piel" , and "El misterio del Kharisiri" [seems to be a witchcraft movie].

[slayrrr666]

Wow, so Peru's getting in on the genre and with some fine stuff to boot? I'll definitely be keeping my eye on those efforts in the future. Thanks for the head's up.