It’s
probably tempting critical fate to call your movie Atrocious
– negative reviews more or less write themselves after that.
Thankfully, this film doesn’t live up to the threat of that
title… but it also fails to live up to its own potential.
This is the latest ‘found footage’ horror movie to
appear, and is spiritually closer to The Blair Witch Project
than most others, featuring as it does extensive footage of people
running about lost in the woods. The footage is supplied by teenage
brother and sister Cristian (Cristian Valencia) and July (Chus
Pereiro), who are a precocious pair of self-styled supernatural
investigators – you’ve probably seen equally self-important
types on YouTube - who are dragged to an old family home in Sitges
for a holiday and decide to investigate a local ghost story while
there. They are soon exploring the allegedly haunted woods conveniently
located right next to their home, overly expensive camcorders
in hand (the idea that they would have two identical, high-end
cameras – obviously helpful for the purposes of this movie
– is a bit of a stretch, even for soiled brats), where they
quickly get lost even in daylight. So when they find themselves
out there at night, after their dog has been killed and their
little brother has disappeared, things quickly go from bad to
worse.
Atrocious
has a slow build up to the frantic finale, and uses the time to
lay the groundwork for some potentially scary supernatural elements
– stories of increasing moans in the night, the ghost appearing
behind you out of nowhere and ambiguous stories about your eventual
fate set up a genuinely chilling final act…. That we don’t
get. Don’t get me wrong – the final third of the film
is certainly a tense, chaotic affair, as the pair stumble through
the woods (that director Fernando Barredo Luna does an efficient
job of making look labyrinthine and maze-like, despite the fact
that you suspect they are actually not much bigger than a large
garden), and justifies the camcorder style by having the protagonists
using the night vision setting to see where they are going. But
the set up of ghostly effects is disregarded. There’s a
good reason for that, plot-wise, but I can’t help thinking
that the film is missing a trick by not following the story that
it sets up. To say more would spoil the twist – though the
final revelation seems too contrived and spells things out rather
too clearly. The joy of much supernatural horror – especially
of this type – is the level of mystery that is maintained
after the credits have rolled. Would The Blair Witch Project’s
ending have been as memorable is we were confronted with the actual
witch? Of course not. Atrocious manages to pull
the rug from under your expectations, but in doing so rather undermines
its own story.
That aside though, this is an effectively creepy film that does
a good job of building up to the terror, and has some genuinely
unnerving imagery. If you enjoy found footage films (and given
that the format is perfect for low budget horror, who doesn’t
apart from the miserablist crowd who moan about such films when
not moaning about remakes, sequels, ‘torture porn’,
PG-13 horror, 3D etc), you’ll find much to keep you enthralled
here. It’s just a pity that the final pay-off is such a
let down.It stops a good film from being a great film.
It’s
probably tempting critical fate to call your movie Atrocious
– negative reviews more or less write themselves after that.
Thankfully, this film doesn’t live up to the threat of that
title… but it also fails to live up to its own potential.
Atrocious
has a slow build up to the frantic finale, and uses the time to
lay the groundwork for some potentially scary supernatural elements
– stories of increasing moans in the night, the ghost appearing
behind you out of nowhere and ambiguous stories about your eventual
fate set up a genuinely chilling final act…. That we don’t
get. Don’t get me wrong – the final third of the film
is certainly a tense, chaotic affair, as the pair stumble through
the woods (that director Fernando Barredo Luna does an efficient
job of making look labyrinthine and maze-like, despite the fact
that you suspect they are actually not much bigger than a large
garden), and justifies the camcorder style by having the protagonists
using the night vision setting to see where they are going. But
the set up of ghostly effects is disregarded. There’s a
good reason for that, plot-wise, but I can’t help thinking
that the film is missing a trick by not following the story that
it sets up. To say more would spoil the twist – though the
final revelation seems too contrived and spells things out rather
too clearly. The joy of much supernatural horror – especially
of this type – is the level of mystery that is maintained
after the credits have rolled. Would The Blair Witch Project’s
ending have been as memorable is we were confronted with the actual
witch? Of course not. Atrocious manages to pull
the rug from under your expectations, but in doing so rather undermines
its own story.
