It has been approximately forever, but I'm here with more reviews. Would you believe it, but I'm currently quarantined in my house! So I've taken the opportunity to watch a few films I hadn't yet seen, Atrocious, or Atroz in its native Spanish, was recommended to me by a kind internet stranger, so thank you internet stranger! In a continuation of my disturbing films reviews, I'm back with this!
Before I get into the review, I would like to put a HUGE WARNING on this one. This is a very in depth review with talk of many atrocities (hehe).
Atroz (Atrocious) is a 2015 Mexican film, it's a found footage style extreme film, quick plot summary: a woman is hit by a car and dies, the perpetrators who hit her have their car searched by police, who uncover some quite disturbing footage on a camcorder.
Nice and vague to start with, well, I'm sure you're all dying to know, just how Atrocious is... Atrocious? Well, truthfully, I liked this film, it was acted and paced well and had fantastic special effects, there is a plot and the found footage style makes sense in the context of the film. This is not for the faint of heart, and if you can't deal with films like "A Serbian Film" I cannot recommend this for you. If however; you're a bit sick and twisted, there are worse films to watch.
Onto spoiler territory:
This was an absolute roller-coaster of a film. It started slow, with 3 and a half minutes of MEXICO. After 3 and a half minutes, I have decided Mexico is not somewhere I would want to live; sets the scene quite appropriately. I'll start by saying that this was not filmed on a potato, a minor miracle in the found footage genre and almost unheard of in these underground shockers. Even the digital camcorder stuff isn't half bad. There isn't much of a soundtrack to talk about, but some odd sound choices with discordant noises being used during the film - which takes you out of the realism a little bit, but is only slightly distracting.
After the opening scenes, the viewer is shown the covered, but incredibly bloody, body of a woman who has been hit by a car and killed, the two perpetrators (the most important one, whom I shall name is Goyo) are locked in a police car, and the commander-in-chief (Juarez) walks in. He enquires about the scene, who they have arrested and then disregards the need for crime scene investigators by sitting down in the car and searching it. During this bit of decidedly dodgy police work, he finds a camcorder with a tape inside. The video then changes to show two men (the perpetrators we have already seen) filming a prostitute that they have decided to target. The viewer discovers that she is trans (it is heavily implied with comments regarding her looking like a man). After kidnapping her, the man behind the camera realises that the camera is going to run out of battery and leaves to get the charger. When he returns, Goyo is vomiting, and the prostitute has soiled herself. Because there is nothing on earth people love more than poop and sick? They proceed to torture her before killing her. Although somewhat graphic, minus the aforementioned poop and sick; this is nothing new, if you have seen a gory film, you'll survive this scene. I particularly liked a filming trick used during this section in which the camera is from the point of view of one of the men's fists, and he is repeatedly punching the prostitute, which leads to some blood getting on the camera lens. The other man tries to clean it off, but actually makes the camera very blurry, which at the time I believed to be a way to cover up poor effects, however; having seen the entire film now, I think it was to ease the viewer into what comes after.
The tape ends and we are shown the two men tied to chairs, my favourite thing ever happens, and one of the men has a fingernail (or two, I had to stop looking at this point) ripped out. Both men are tortured by the police, but Goyo is definitely bearing the brunt of the torture. Eventually, after a little relaxing testicle electrocution, Goyo admits the crime and tells Juarez where it occurred, and the film moves on to the scene of the crime. Here another tape is found, and curiously an old VHS tape. The camcorder tape is watched first.
Another day, another prostitute. This one is working in some kind of strip club, but will happily go home with customers. A second trip to Goyo's place, and the viewer is gifted some good old fashioned auto-erotic asphyxiation, before a beating with the camera, and some scissor work in the genital area (no, not that kind...) with some necrophilia added just to sweeten this already rancid mix. I will add here that the pacing of this film is absolutely fantastic, there are very few slow moments, and the first bit of gore is within the eleven minute mark. It is only eighty minutes long, so there shouldn't be too much dragging, but the film is kind of like being hit in the face repeatedly, it's unrelenting.
We cut back to Juarez and Goyo discussing Goyo's childhood, which was abusive, and then we are shown the VHS tape. A gruelling twenty odd minutes narrating the abusive childhood Goyo had and his astoundingly disturbing revenge. A homophobic, physically, mentally and sexually abusive father and an enabling mother. Goyo's father believes that his child is gay, so anally rapes him. I'll leave out the detail here and just briefly state two things: anal rape with barbed wire, and "Forced Gender Reassignment" (thanks Cattle Decapitation!). He then slits his sister's throat in a fit of rage, and becomes aroused by the blood. The special effects are really, really damn good!
And finally, we come to the ending; which was a bit of a surprise. It turns out that the other guy hung himself, the first prostitute we see get murdered was Juarez's brother, and that Goyo didn't kill his sister, and this was all somehow set up by Juarez, and I don't really understand how that works. Honestly, I hated the ending. I hated it with such a passion. And it was a shame, because you want to know the truth? I enjoyed this flick! It's mean spirited, and sick, and disturbing and I wanted to audibly gagged at a couple of points, but it's slick, and it's well acted by all parties, it's incredibly well paced and there isn't a boring moment. The special effects remain a stand out of films of this type, but overall, a good film.
7/10
Before I get into the review, I would like to put a HUGE WARNING on this one. This is a very in depth review with talk of many atrocities (hehe).
Atroz (Atrocious) is a 2015 Mexican film, it's a found footage style extreme film, quick plot summary: a woman is hit by a car and dies, the perpetrators who hit her have their car searched by police, who uncover some quite disturbing footage on a camcorder.
Nice and vague to start with, well, I'm sure you're all dying to know, just how Atrocious is... Atrocious? Well, truthfully, I liked this film, it was acted and paced well and had fantastic special effects, there is a plot and the found footage style makes sense in the context of the film. This is not for the faint of heart, and if you can't deal with films like "A Serbian Film" I cannot recommend this for you. If however; you're a bit sick and twisted, there are worse films to watch.
Onto spoiler territory:
This was an absolute roller-coaster of a film. It started slow, with 3 and a half minutes of MEXICO. After 3 and a half minutes, I have decided Mexico is not somewhere I would want to live; sets the scene quite appropriately. I'll start by saying that this was not filmed on a potato, a minor miracle in the found footage genre and almost unheard of in these underground shockers. Even the digital camcorder stuff isn't half bad. There isn't much of a soundtrack to talk about, but some odd sound choices with discordant noises being used during the film - which takes you out of the realism a little bit, but is only slightly distracting.
After the opening scenes, the viewer is shown the covered, but incredibly bloody, body of a woman who has been hit by a car and killed, the two perpetrators (the most important one, whom I shall name is Goyo) are locked in a police car, and the commander-in-chief (Juarez) walks in. He enquires about the scene, who they have arrested and then disregards the need for crime scene investigators by sitting down in the car and searching it. During this bit of decidedly dodgy police work, he finds a camcorder with a tape inside. The video then changes to show two men (the perpetrators we have already seen) filming a prostitute that they have decided to target. The viewer discovers that she is trans (it is heavily implied with comments regarding her looking like a man). After kidnapping her, the man behind the camera realises that the camera is going to run out of battery and leaves to get the charger. When he returns, Goyo is vomiting, and the prostitute has soiled herself. Because there is nothing on earth people love more than poop and sick? They proceed to torture her before killing her. Although somewhat graphic, minus the aforementioned poop and sick; this is nothing new, if you have seen a gory film, you'll survive this scene. I particularly liked a filming trick used during this section in which the camera is from the point of view of one of the men's fists, and he is repeatedly punching the prostitute, which leads to some blood getting on the camera lens. The other man tries to clean it off, but actually makes the camera very blurry, which at the time I believed to be a way to cover up poor effects, however; having seen the entire film now, I think it was to ease the viewer into what comes after.
The tape ends and we are shown the two men tied to chairs, my favourite thing ever happens, and one of the men has a fingernail (or two, I had to stop looking at this point) ripped out. Both men are tortured by the police, but Goyo is definitely bearing the brunt of the torture. Eventually, after a little relaxing testicle electrocution, Goyo admits the crime and tells Juarez where it occurred, and the film moves on to the scene of the crime. Here another tape is found, and curiously an old VHS tape. The camcorder tape is watched first.
Another day, another prostitute. This one is working in some kind of strip club, but will happily go home with customers. A second trip to Goyo's place, and the viewer is gifted some good old fashioned auto-erotic asphyxiation, before a beating with the camera, and some scissor work in the genital area (no, not that kind...) with some necrophilia added just to sweeten this already rancid mix. I will add here that the pacing of this film is absolutely fantastic, there are very few slow moments, and the first bit of gore is within the eleven minute mark. It is only eighty minutes long, so there shouldn't be too much dragging, but the film is kind of like being hit in the face repeatedly, it's unrelenting.
We cut back to Juarez and Goyo discussing Goyo's childhood, which was abusive, and then we are shown the VHS tape. A gruelling twenty odd minutes narrating the abusive childhood Goyo had and his astoundingly disturbing revenge. A homophobic, physically, mentally and sexually abusive father and an enabling mother. Goyo's father believes that his child is gay, so anally rapes him. I'll leave out the detail here and just briefly state two things: anal rape with barbed wire, and "Forced Gender Reassignment" (thanks Cattle Decapitation!). He then slits his sister's throat in a fit of rage, and becomes aroused by the blood. The special effects are really, really damn good!
And finally, we come to the ending; which was a bit of a surprise. It turns out that the other guy hung himself, the first prostitute we see get murdered was Juarez's brother, and that Goyo didn't kill his sister, and this was all somehow set up by Juarez, and I don't really understand how that works. Honestly, I hated the ending. I hated it with such a passion. And it was a shame, because you want to know the truth? I enjoyed this flick! It's mean spirited, and sick, and disturbing and I wanted to audibly gagged at a couple of points, but it's slick, and it's well acted by all parties, it's incredibly well paced and there isn't a boring moment. The special effects remain a stand out of films of this type, but overall, a good film.
7/10
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