Latinoamerican horror

[Fenril]

You're welcome.

Yeah, it seems a lot of south american countries are getting a film industry reinassance (or in some cases, plain old film industry birth), something to do with new state laws about sponsoring local flim productions. The current crops of filmmakers include a few who are quite interested in horror [and unlike a few 80's and 90's directors, they don't pretend that they aren't genre directors], among other genres.

[slayrrr666]

Sept 25, 2012 19:11:05 GMT -5 Fenril said:

and unlike a few 80's and 90's directors, they don't pretend that they aren't genre directors

That might be the most important aspect right there. Far too many films are ruined from what could've been great through a failure to understand the target audience (you've got a masked killer running around offing people with knives, axes and such but claim it's a psychological thriller about the lead's inability to grasp reality) or unable to capitalize on something that would've been a classic had it spent the time as a full-on horror effort instead of feeling as though it's a genre that's beneath them. That's one of the things that, if it holds true, could mean a lot of fun could come from these efforts.

[Fenril]

- Caleuche, el llamado del mar. Oceanologist Isabel is dying from a genetic disorder, and so she leaves her cushy life in Boston and her fiance to travel back to the tiny chilean island that her father fled as a teenager and that she promised to visit one day on his behalf. But Millalobos isn't just a scenic island, it is a place of superstitions both wonderful and dangerous. Like that ghost ship that might help Isabel unravel the truth behind her father's death and her grandparent's dissapearance more than twenty years ago...

This was one hell of a troubled production, as it was technically finished in 2009, but director Jorge Olguín took a while to find a suitable distributing company [reportedly Guillermo del Toro got him in touch with Miramax, but they wanted to scrap his plot and recicle it as another "Pirates of the Caribbean" entry. He eventually landed a deal with a Brazilian company].

Fortunately the result is one hell of a fantasy / monster movie that takes advantage of local folklore and generous nods to classic seagoing horrors (The mistery of the Marie Celeste, The flying dutchman, John Carpenter's The fog, H. P. Lovecraft's Dagon). IMHO, Jorge Olguín's best movie so far (I have yet to see "Solos").

[slayrrr666]

Managed to catch one last night, one you're familiar with in Juan of the Dead (Juan de los Muertos).

When a man notices that a zombie epidemic has overrun his Cuban home-town, he joins forces with his friends to start an eradication service to dispose of them only to realize the inevitable and tries to get them out of the country alive.

This turned out to be one of the more flat-out enjoyable zombie efforts around in the last few years with some absolutely great work to this one when it came down to it. The comedy here is the biggest plus, as this seems to be done in the right way with a group of funny people at the center of the storyline rather than just trying to shoehorn the jokes and gags into the proceedings, and there's a lot of fun with the great comedy that comes from both the verbal and physical areas (including one all-time classic of the group entering a getaway car from the zombies without appointing a driver as the approaching horde closes in on them with the group still arguing who's going to drive) yet is still smart enough to keep the creatures as true threats and something to be dealt with in a serious matter. This allows for a lot of great gore to come through with some pretty innovative kills and copious bloodletting during the zombie massacres, even though the low-budget shines through and it resorts to clever and ingenious but still cop-out methods of hiding the biggest gore scenes. As well, the fact that the scatter-shot story seems to go all over the place at times is a little problematic, but overall this was a pretty entertaining and enjoyable zombie epic from a novel new country.

[Fenril]

- Bajo la piel (Peru, 1996). A small town in northern Peru is under attack by a vicious serial killer who's been severing the heads of local teenagers *after* gouging out their eyes. Under pressure from the corrupt town mayor, police captain Percy Corso enlists the help of an athropology professor and a sexy mortician. From the former, he learns that the murders resemble sacrifices that the ancient Moches used as a tribute to the god of rage. From the later, that the murderer has the skill of a surgeon (the eyes were extrated in their entirety, nerve and all) but is using ancient tools. But when the mayor's lecherous son gets involved in the case, Corso will learn a fierce lesson about the human capacity for violence...

A very interesting script that is nearly ruined by the director's change of goals halfway through the shoot --he decided that instead of just a murder thriller, he wanted to make a moral drama as well. The result is rather mixed: a movie that can't quite decide what it wants to be. Not to mention, when all is said and done the killer's true motivation is flimsy at best. This is still saved due to some fine performances, an effective (if predictable) twist halfway through and a good soundtrack.

[slayrrr666]

Among the weekend's viewings, got one from here (and my first true Chilean horror effort so I can finally knock that country off my list of cultures I need to see a genre production from), Descendents (Solos).

After a devastating war has left the world polluted, a group of Chilean children who are able to survive in the toxic world navigate through the treacherous, zombie-infested world in order to find a sea-side sanctuary.

Unfortunately, this didn't turn out to be all that great of an effort. The main problem here is the decidedly haphazard manner it's story runs through all sorts of rather inane and useless side-plots that don't offer up anything remotely interesting throughout. The concept of a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by zombies is a concept that in itself is done to death and hardly interesting in the slightest, and to counter this the concept of having children grow a gill-like appendage to breathe through but other than that it's hardly all that new and this feature isn't explored or even granted enough time to really make a mark on what it means. All sorts of clues are guessed at, but it never gives a definitive explanation for anything since it's too busy with the single most irritating flaw in this, the constant sentimental strains and melodramatic turns it provides. This plays out more like a dark children's fantasy tale about their survival in the landscape more than being munched on by zombies or forcing them to face any kind of fears or life-lessons along the way as this constantly has them sitting around talking about the world at large or what it means to miss their parents who are left behind. The dreams and constant memory-fades that this wallows in are for the most part the main source of inspiration through this so it really doesn't bring in a lot of opportunities for zombie carnage throughout though that is on offer as well. The make-up isn't bad and the gore is certainly serviceable as the early attacks at the compound and their escape attempt are about the main threats by the creatures throughout this, so they take on the main gist of the action scenes here but otherwise there's just not enough spread throughout the rest of the film to really justify the remaining flaws being so persistent and focused in here.