Aftershock (2012)

"In Chile, a group of travellers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare."

I've been struggling with this movie review for so long that it isn't even funny. But finally, after several glasses of Teacher's and Coke, I'm biting the bullet and writing the first things that come into my head just to get the damned thing out of the way.

The first problem I've been having with "Aftershock" is that it isn't really a horror movie. It's a mean-spirited disaster movie with horror elements. The second problem is, of course, because I'm hardly the biggest fan of Eli Roth. Actually, I'll go further than that, I can't stand his "Hostel" and "Cabin Fever" movies. The weird thing, though, is that I've actually started to like Eli Roth as an actor based on his performance here.

Okay, so Eli Roth is obviously channelling a lot of David Schwimmer and that type into his "Gringo" character, and he comes across as a total wussypants, but he's kind of likeable with it. When the bad things start happening, it's Eli Roth who you're rooting for the most, and I never thought I'd write those words in the same sentence.

Huge spoilers coming!

What happens in Chile stays in Chile!

As the majority of the action in this movie is a series of darkly comedic gags which make as much use of the "no good deed goes unpunished" cliché as possible, it's not worth worrying about the plot too much. Some people have described "Aftershock" as "Hostel with an earthquake" and that's about as deep as it gets. Basically, a bunch of not very worldy-wise tourists in Chile end up dying unpleasantly at the hands of Mother Nature, escaped convicts, or a combination of both.

Eyecandy is provided by Andrea Osvárt (as Monica), Natasha Yarovenko (as Irina), and Lorenzo Izzo (as Kylie). The latter is also in Eli Roth's remake of "The Green Inferno" which I know you're all looking forward to as much as I'm not. These girls really go through it. If it's not bad enough to be shook up by an earthquake and have huge chunks of rock fall on you, they end up getting chased by criminals, one gets raped and then shot, and after making the wrong choice about who to trust, well, not to put too fine a point on it, they all die horribly. The final scene with the "final girl" is hilarious for those of us who are sick of the trope.

The guys along with Eli Roth don't fare any better. Ariel Levy (who keeps his own first name) and Nicolás Martínez (as Pollo) are a very likeable pair whose antics endear you to them even when they are being assholes. They don't make it out of this movie alive either, and nor does our Eli. In fact, Eli Roth's death in this movie is one of the nastiest things I've seen in a long time, not because of the effects, but because of the sadistic and unneccesary nature of it.

Bloody good!

Since "Aftershock" is a disaster movie, it's very frugal with the spectacular effects or people running around in chaos, but it's not too sparse, and there's more than enough to create the right atmosphere. It's $2,000,000 budget was only double that of a movie by The Asylum, so consider the coat cut according to the cloth. It's certainly not disappointing for gore!

I liked "Aftershock" so much that I'm going to put it in "The Vault". It's not the best disaster movie I've ever seen, but it's the best disaster-horror hybrid movie I've seen this year other than "Sharknado".

Baby Shower (2011)

"Four ex-classmates get together to celebrate the pregnancy of one of them. The venue chosen for the party is a country house located one hour away from the city. It has been a while since the four of them saw each other for the last time, and one recently committed betrayal threatens to destroy their long and deep friendship. The revelation of a dark secret and a series of violent deaths transform the baby shower into a nightmare. A very disturbing one."

Something which surprised me after watching "Baby Shower", and then looking up reviews to steal pictures from, is that there aren't any positive reviews of this movie to be found on the IMDb (or anywhere else for that matter). That seems very odd to me, and means one of two things: either not enough people have seen this movie yet, or a lot of copying and pasting has been done from one review to another. Bearing in mind that the "critics" in every case mainly retell the story in their own spoilerific words, I have no respect for any of them, least of all one who hated the movie because it had subtitles, and another douchebag who I know didn't give it his full attention because he practically lives on Twitter.

I have no idea what director Pablo Illanes did to upset these "reviewers" apart from placing non-comedic versions of the "Sex and the City" girls in the middle of a Chilean forest and bumping them off in fabulously gory ways—especially as I think the whole idea is absolutely fantastic—so just because he's managed to bring one of my own sordid dreams to life, I'm going to give "Baby Shower" a thoroughly positive review to redress the balance.

Okay, I admit that in my imagination, it would only be the most irritating characters from "Sex and the City" being tortured in insanely erotic ways that wouldn't ever legally make it to film, but you have to take what you can get. Obviously, nobody would want to see anything bad happen to Charlotte (Kristin Davis), since she's the only pretty one in the show, and I'm pleased to say that her lookalike Ángela (Ingrid Isensee) doesn't suffer too much either (except emotionally!). Everyone else does—oh, yes, indeedy—and there's lots of blood, nudity, and mean-spiritness to enjoy here!

Aside from (but including) the boobs and blood, the cinematography is sometimes quite beautiful, especially for a low-budget foreign movie (if you can call $900,000 low-budget!), and the location looks the part. Where logically there should be spaciousness, the atmosphere is parodoxically claustrophobic, and that takes some doing, especially as the camera looks at everything you want to see and quite a few unpleasant things which most people don't!

"You have to let go of who you were to become who you will be."

With a hint of "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) and a little bit of the craziness from "Inside" (2007), the plot itself isn't the most original, but it's handled in a much better way than either of those aforementioned borefests. Let's face it, I might like "Rosemary's Baby" myself, but it's still 45 years old and has become horribly dated now. It was never very believable to begin with, and teenagers are more likely to laugh at it. On the other hand, "Inside" is simply an overrated idiot play with unrealistic gore, and I'll never understand its appeal if I live to be a hundred.

Thus, even with its stereotypical characters which aren't really developed, and other clichés such as non-functioning cell phones abounding, "Baby Shower" is much more suitable for a modern audience, especially if they're sick puppies like me who appreciate realistic woundings and creative kills. The fact that the actresses are some of the best-looking women in Chile also doesn't hurt. Just pick out your favourite and enjoy her for as long as she remains on screen.

Once again, I'm not going to give any spoilers because I hate it when other people do that. Suffice it to say that the sexy "Samantha" character called Olivia (Claudia Burr) steals the show from creepy lunatic Soledad (Patricia López), but the rest of the cast are still impressive. In particular, Sofía García, Francisca Merino, and Kiki Rojo don't play typical helpless victims; they fight back and scream very well indeed!

The only eyecandy for the ladies is Álvaro Gómez as Julio whose first appearance is shirtless and riding a horse, so you can imagine the impression that makes! He's not quite Marcus Tandy from "Eldorado", but women shouldn't be watching horror movies for hunky men anyway. To be honest, women shouldn't ever watch horror movies like this in the first place because they'll only bitch about the gratuitous nudity, misogynistic violence, and rape afterwards. I've had enough of those prudes to last me a lifetime, and I'm sure you have too.

As "Baby Shower" isn't available on DVD yet (except in Germany), you'll have to be a Netflix subscriber to see it legally anywhere else, but you should definitely check it out if you're into the gory stuff, and unlike some dumbass reviewers, you don't mind reading subtitles.

Highly recommended.

Magic Magic (2013)

"A naive young tourist's road trip across Chile with friends turns into a waking nightmare."

Just a quickie for "Surprise Sunday" which I'm forced to backdate due to the automated scheduling on Blogger failing. Actually, it's my fault, but it's easier to blame someone else! I wrote this review and forgot to set the posting time. Doh!

Anyway, what we have here is a tragic moment for a group of "teenagers" in a foreign country, and the events leading up to it. Essentially, it's a drama about mental illness with elements of a psychological thriller thrown in as red herrings.

Starring Juno Temple as the ill-fated and oversensitive nutter, Emily Browning (from "The Uninvited" remake) as her best friend, and Michael Cera in a even more immature and sadistic role than usual, there's a lot to like in "Magic Magic" but also a lot to hate about it too. For one thing, it doesn't have much to do with magic unless you count some bogus hypnotism and a bizarre folk-magic ritual near the end.

Thus, it's not a horror movie or a supernatural movie per se, but it has a few creepy bits and an air of menace about it in places which you have to be in the right headspace to appreciate. If you've ever felt isolated in a foreign country, especially one where you don't speak the language, you'll be able to empathise with Alicia (Juno Temple) to a certain extent.

Pretty Pretty

Needless to say the actresses in this are all fairly attactive. Alicia and Sarah (Emily Browning) look very natural although Barbara (Catalina Sandino Moreno)—who I couldn't find a picture of but is in the trailer above—steals the show with her exotic beauty and sexy accent in the rare moments that she's on screen. Juno Temple flashes some T&A for perverts everywhere, and gets dry-humped by a horny dog, so kudos to her for being such a good sport.

For the ladies, Agustín Silva, the younger brother of the writer/director Sebastián Silva, should be enough eyecandy because Michael Cera sure as Hell isn't going to do it for anybody! Not only is Brink (Michael Cera) exceedingly irritating, but he's creepy with it as well. My West Coast friends would describe him as "rapey" although he's just a typical ugly teenager who hasn't realised that he doesn't have the looks to pull off his awkward attempts at seduction. He's also chosen the wrong girl to practice on for reasons which become more apparent as the story progresses.

Where's yo chin at, dude?

Overall, "Magic Magic" is an uncomfortable movie to watch and not a completely satisfying one either. As a "moment in time", it fails to be as enigmatic as a cult European movie despite having a similarly unresolved ending. When I say "unresolved", it does have an ending, but it leaves you wanting to know a bit more. Or not, as the case may be.

The filming in Chile is nice for people who would like to see a South American country which isn't so "third world" as xenophobes pretend it is. Chile is actually not much different to Europe financially, but the culture shock will still be there for spoiled Americans. As a coddled Brit, I've never been to Chile either and don't really want to after "Hidden in the Woods" (2012), but that's another story. The Chilean actresses are very good-looking from what I've seen so far, and if I was 20 years younger (and stupid enough to believe in movies!), I would be backpacking my way there right now.

I would recommend "Magic Magic" for the acting, but all that is negated by three scenes of animal cruelty which I'm not going to go into detail about. Suffice it to say that although they may be necessary to the story, such scenes aren't something which I wish to see in anything which is supposed to be entertainment. I've seen far too much animal cruelty in real life caused by idiots like the ones portrayed in this movie, and it just makes me angry.

You have been warned!

Hidden in the Woods (2012)

(AKA "En las afueras de la ciudad")



"After their abusive father is jailed, two sisters being raised in a remote area of Chile find they have to answer to their uncle, a drug kingpin who wants his missing product back."

Yeah, I'm back again but only briefly. I've had another non-eventful birthday (apart from James Herbert dying on it!) last week, finally figured out how to turn off all the annoying random characters that were being added to the names of the images I uploaded to Photobucket, and I've been spending way too long playing on Twitter. Let's face it, as much fun as Twitter is, I'm primarily a blogger so I can't be confined to 140 character limits forever.

Anyway, I missed out on Patricio Valladares' "Hidden in the Woods" last year so I watched it yesterday. I can't say that I was overly impressed although it's certainly gory enough for most people and has a couple of nice-looking Chilean girls in it.

Thanks to "Hidden in the Woods", I had to look up where Chile was on the map. I always thought that Chile was an island somewhere near Portugal rather than a long, straggly country in South America so I learnt something. Geography has never been my strong point, but I had to Google where Chile was after watching this film so that I never accidentally go there. It's probably a great country, but this film makes it look like a horribly uncivilised place to be. There are too many trees and violently insane people living among them for my liking.

Siboney Lo as Ana

The real trouble with "Hidden in the Woods" though is that despite all the shock scenes and gore, it isn't so much a horror movie as just another rape-revenge, "faux-grindhouse", exploitation movie with a ludicrous crime story forced into the mix. I'm not a big fan of this subgenre and always fail to see the joke. That's assuming that this was put together as a bit of fun and not meant to be a serious drama. "Inspired by true events" doesn't seem that likely unless Chile really does contain so many rapists in its sylvan areas or have police even more useless than the ones in "Inside".

Paradoxically, acting and filming wise, "Hidden in the Woods" isn't a bad movie as such. It's obviously ragged in places, but it doesn't reek of someone trying to intentionally make a "so bad, it's good" abomination (although a few comic touches particularly during Ana's short career as a prostitute may make you wonder). I liked the gore effects and almost got into what Patricio Valladares was trying to do about two-thirds of the way through, but by then, it was too late. Homaging dozens of better horror movies (including "Spider Baby", "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Frontier(s)" and even "The Woman") isn't so clever when there's hardly any originality used elsewhere.

Having willingly suspended my disbelief during the schizophrenic tonal changes and poorly realised plot, I can't easily put my finger on why the story didn't work for me except that the lead female characters were either too flat or too inconsistent and didn't really evoke any kind of sympathy. It's pretty hard to sympathise with an inbred family of hillbilly cannibals anyway even if you imagine that the girls might clean up rather nicely. The men in this film are all one-dimensional and despicably vile as well.

Carolina Escobar as Anny

Basically, "Hidden in the Woods" is a misogynistic tale of murder, rape, incest, prostitution, cannibalism, drug dealers, torture, and even more rape and murder. If any of those combined elements interest you then knock yourself out. If you want to actually feel something for the victims in a mean-spirited movie then I recommend watching something else such as "I Spit on Your Grave" or "The Last House on the Left" (either the originals or the remakes). Even "A Serbian Film" has more pathos than "Hidden in the Woods".

The "Reservoir Dogs" ending just ruins any time invested in trying to get involved with the characters, thus leaving the experience unsatisfying and forgettable. In fairness, the characters are such damaged goods that no happy ending is possible, but it still feels like a cop-out especially with the clunky twist during the end credits.

Inevitably, there is already an American remake planned which will, surprisingly, also be directed by Patricio Valladares. With a few changes, it might be okay, but I highly doubt it.