The Horror Show
Barrio Tales
by Jarret Tarnol
There are few, if any, subgenres of horror that get me more excited than the anthology category. Although historically they have been mostly unsuccessful at pulling in the bucks, when done well anthology films are amongst the most fun of any other. For those of you unfamiliar, an anthology film is a movie that has several (usually between two and five) stories that are, for the most part, separate from one another. While there are anthology films in other genres, the world of horror is the primary domain for this type of experience.
Perhaps the most famous example of the anthology film is the 1980 classic Creepshow, but there were plenty before that. Whether we're talking about From Beyond the Grave with Peter Cushing or From a Whisper to a Scream with Vincent Price, this type of film has a rich history. A lot of anthology flicks center around the classic “Urban Legend” motif, such as Campfire Tales and Campfire Stories. Others have a theme, for example, the urban horror classic Tales From the Hood and the western Grim Prairie Tales.
Barrio Tales continues this tradition with a Mexican setup, telling three stories that all have something to do with (stereotypical) Hispanic culture. Although not all films of the anthology variety do, most contain a “frame story”; a story that connects all the little tales and provides a reason for the stories to be told in the first place. In the case of Barrio Tales, we follow two young men traveling through Mexico in search of pot. They reach the general area of the drop-off and meet up with a Mexican local who claims he knows the dealer in question. The man takes the boys to his campsite and, while they wait for the guy with the goods, their new correspondent regales them with three stories of terror.
The first tale centers around a frequent theme in the film: white people are all rich and terrible. A young man returns from school to find that his parents are gone and he has the whole house to himself for the summer. He, of course, invites several of his friends over. Just to emphasize how wealthy and privileged these kids are, they manage to throw a party with levels of drugs with which the cocaine blowout in “Carlito's Way” would be green with jealousy. The son discovers that a new attractive young maid named Maria is now living in the house and he and his friends make sure to give her as hard a time as possible for no real reason. The only one who is nice to her in any capacity is the only Spanish speaking friend, an aspect that disappears just as quickly as it is presented.
After partying to an obnoxious degree, things go bad and it quickly turns into an I Know What You Did Last Summer type of scenario. The story gets boring in that aspect and quickly involves Maria's voodoo savvy grandmother and closes in the most predictable way possible. There's no buildup, no surprises, it plays out as obviously as you can imagine. None of the characters are likable and until the last minute it's not so much a horror story as it is a story about a bunch of entitled white snobs having a contest to see who can be the most irritating.
We are returned to the central setting and our storyteller moves onto another tale. This one revolves around a beloved taco stand by the name of “Tio's Tacos.” It is owned and operated by a local who goes by the moniker “Uncle Tio” and he is especially a hit with a group of local kids. It is established from the start that there has been a string of missing children in the area and you can pretty much guess where it goes from there. If there is any surprise to the ending of this story, it's only if you give the film the benefit of the doubt and think that the obvious isn't going to happen. Once again, it plays out exactly how you'd imagine, without being aware of how bland the lack of twists and turns are. The whole thing feels like a condensed version of The Ice Cream Man and isn't much less stupid. It is more entertaining than the first, however, and has at least one good jump-scare.
We are then led into the final story that seems to think it's making more of a point than it actually does. It starts with a bunch of laborers being picked up by a group of white good 'ol boys. The workers are drugged and it is made clear once they are brought back to the southerner's house that things are not going to go well for them. The men turn out to be brothers and they, along with other relatives including their sister, get their kicks torturing and killing those they see as being “illegals.” There's some generic white trash hate speech thrown around but other than that they come across as a lazy attempt at re-capturing more successful “evil families” such as Rob Zombie's Firefly clan or the Sawyers from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The characters here are far less interesting, and the story progresses in a way that feels like the movie itself is just as confused as to where it's going as we are. Even more unfortunate is that it winds up going nowhere. There is some good acting in this one, but overall it feels the most desperate. It's fun to watch, though, and there is more guessing involved than with the previous tales.
Overall, the film is too much fun to be called bad, but not enough fun to be called great. Every character is some kind of stereotype. This isn't a problem right off the bat, as over-the-top representations of various cultures is common in such movies. But this film plays everything so seriously, that you can't help but feel that the cliché' characters aren't supposed to be that way. Whereas Tales From the Hood had some very down to earth analysis of a culture, Barrio Tales simply thinks it does. I'd be fine with a crazy, wild, tongue-in-cheek ride over the border, but this one goes back and forth between dullness and attempts at being dark that it's hard to get an overall feel with it. There are some great moments, but not quite enough to edge the film into worthwhile territory.
I love anthology horror and I don't consider Barrio Tales to be an insult or failure to the genre. It's fun and has some really cool parts to it that make me glad I started it. It has its flaws, but it keeps moving and is never full-on boring. In the end, the simplest way to put it is that Barrio Tales is far from the worst anthology horror film I've seen, but it's also far from the best.
PJ Griffin, HMS
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