Atrocious
by Fernando Barreda Luna
I am a huge culprit of falling asleep during movies. If I'm the slightest bit tired or if it's super late I'm guaranteed to pass out, especially if I'm watching subtitles. It's at it's worst when I'm drifting in and out and I'm fighting to stay awake missing large amounts of the plot in the process. However, late one night while crashing at my friend's place in Philadelphia, with nothing but my laptop, I decided to watch Atrocious. I had the trinity of sleepiness against me; I was tired, it was like…one in the morning, and it was a subtitled movie. Somehow, I managed to stay up while watching Atrocious. If that doesn't speak for how entertaining this movie is, I don't know if anything will.
Cristian and July are siblings that have a hobby: paranormal investigation. Over Easter, their family decides to visit their vacation home. A local urban legend tells of a girl who disappeared years ago and appears to those who are lost, to guide them to safety. The kids decide to explore a maze in the woods, despite their parent's wishes, in search of the ghost of the girl. Later that night, the family's dog is startled by something and goes missing. Cristian and July promise to their little brother Jose that they'll find him. They find their pet's body thrown into an old well. They vow not to tell Jose so they don't upset him. However, a ghost may not be the one behind the murder of their pet.
Atrocious isn't a very long movie. It's only an hour and fifteen minutes. But, in that time, it manages to successfully build suspense and paces it brilliantly. The movie starts off a bit slow but then about halfway through, the tension builds faster and faster until the climax, and then plot twist. Slashers often pace too quickly; the movie escalates but doesn't really increase tension further. If we made a line graph for most slasher flicks with the x-axis labeled time and the y-axis labeled suspense, you would see that in the first ten minutes the suspense would peak and stay at that level till the end of the movie where it would quickly drop. Then, there are movies that take forever for anything to happen. The most notable example I can think of, is Entrance. That movie was almost unbearable to watch. It seemed like a crappy indie flick, till the last fifteen minutes when it turns into a slasher. Pacing is a critical tool in mood building and it aids in creating an eerie atmosphere. Atrocious made me want to see what would happen next. I was completely invested.
I know I usually go into spiels about how I hate children in movies. Yet, I managed to watch a horror movie where the main characters were kids. I think because for once I felt like kids were portrayed believably in horror movies. Often, I find that kids are portrayed as mentally too mature or too young compared to the character's actual age. Like, teenagers will sometimes act like adults or ten year olds will behave like four year olds. Cristian goes around quoting movies all the time, who as a teenager didn't do that? The siblings fight and argue with one another and their parents too. They also are invested in their paranormal investigation hobby and are super serious about it. When I was a kid I would often invest myself in half-baked ideas but treat them like they were going to be my future careers. If you don't like spoilers skip the rest of this paragraph. I also liked Atrocious because they don't treat kids like they're forbidden from dying. In reality, kids die all the time. I know people hate it when kids die in movies but it's dumb. If a kid is thrown into a situation where there are killer sharks or something, the sharks won't let him live just because he's a child. That's just not how the world works!
This film also mastered misdirection. I don't want to go into too much detail. It's well known that the kids are looking for ghosts. So, it's easy to think that a ghost is responsible for the deaths. Honestly, I was convinced that was it. It wound up being a plot twist that I couldn't even see coming. If you pay close enough attention, you may be able to figure out the ending before it happens.
I would say that the most irksome part about this movie is the fact that at one point the movie fast-forwards. I like watching found footage, thinking in the back of my mind this could be real. Then, the movie skips ahead to news clips that completely ruin the ending of the movie. It just sucked me right out of the film. It would've been cool to incorporate them into the ending credits. It was a low blow to just ruin the movie like that. Another peeve was the use of the duel camera POV system. It wasn't too hard to figure out which character we were following in the less action-y moments because the characters would talk and you could tell who was holding the camera. However, when July and Cristian run into the woods at night and split up, its hard to figure out who you're following. It just makes the movie a little harder to understand is. I was so thankful when they broke the second camera so we could stop being confused.
Overall, I really liked this movie. I can't say I know too much about the Spanish horror subgenre. Virtually everyone in this movie is completely unknown to me. I really like watching movies with unknown actors sometimes. I don't like watching a movie starring huge actors because they will never be anyone other than Will Smith or whoever to me. Sometimes, I will vaguely recognize an unknown actor and spend the entire movie trying to figure out from where I know them. That is also a curse. Atrocious is a relatively short movie but is still enjoyable. If you don't have a mere hour and fifteen minutes to spend on this movie then you don't like horror. That's not true…you may not like found-footage or something…but in that case I don't blame you. I do highly recommend this movie though! It used to be on Netflix but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer. For now, it still can be found on Hulu if you don't mind commercials every 15 minutes.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS