Atrocious

Atrocious (2010)

Runtime: 75 minutes

Directed by: Fernando Barreda Luna

Starring: Cristian Valencia, Clara Moraelda, Jose Masegosa, Chus Pereiro

From: Nabu Films

Sometimes, the jokes really do write themselves… the movie is not SO bad that the title proves to be a one word review of the movie’s quality, but it makes me wonder why this Spanish/Mexican movie got the release it did. It was part of something that started a few months ago with AMC Theatres and the Bloody Disgusting website. As described here, they have midnight screenings two times a week for a short amount of time for some low-budget horror flick. The first few movies they put out weren’t interesting to me but this movie, yet another found footage flick, sounded like it could be worth something and plus, the title just made me laugh, even for the wrong reasons.

The plot isn’t too extensive; a pair of teenage siblings (Valencia, Moraelda) have to spend Easter vacation at a house that their family owns that’s out by the woods, which are supposedly haunted. As fans of “urban legends”, they decide to use their video cameras to investigate the woods and see if the legend is actually true. They soon discover that it is, due to… well, you don’t actually SEE or HEAR too much at all. It’s not like Paranormal Activity where you hear some things and you see a lot of spooky stuff, or even The Blair Witch Project* where you mainly hear spooky stuff and your imagination does a lot of work as to what’s causing all the hullabaloo. Instead, here you have some odd things happen but it’s presented in a way that will make you go “meh” and “eh, whatever”, such as something getting broken in their kitchen or the dog vanishing but you only see the aftermath and not the dog getting yanked away or what have you.

• I haven’t seen that movie in years but I should revisit it one of these days to see what I think of it in modern times. At the time, I wasn’t so hot on the movie, as the characters were rather annoying.

I don’t know why I’ve read some decent to even good reviews of this movie, as I thought not enough happened here at all. Then again, maybe things were seen but it was impossible to make out as there was too much shaky-cam going on where you couldn’t make out what was happening. I swear, there was what seemed like a 5 minute segment where the male teenager was running in the dark in a labyrinth* and all you could see in night-vision was a bunch of shakiness and once or twice he reacted as if he saw something, but hell if you could make out WHAT he may have seen, and with that and his heavy breathing… not good.

• The movie couldn’t even make their setting of a labyrinth right by their house interesting. Now, if they would have had long blonde-haired David Bowie as Jareth The Goblin King playing the villain, then you’d have something.

There’s also a twist ending that’s confused and doesn’t make too much sense. So, what a disappointment this was. The crowd I saw it with didn’t help out matters, but even if they would have been good, my opinion likely wouldn’t be different. I sure as heck hope the other movies in the series are better than this one.

Wednesday night I'll be back with the sort of movie that they SHOULD have released but it got picked up by someone else. I'll tell you now to check out Attack The Block as it's a great twist on the standard alien invasion film.