There’s nothing worse than a horror film where the final twist isn’t equal to the build-up. The “found footage” horror flick Atrocious attempts this unfortunate trick, throwing out a juicy setup for the audience to latch on to, and it scares up quite a few tense moments preying on humanity’s innate fear of the dark, even if it does so in such a way that’s more irritating than truly terrifying. The story of two teens making a film about a local legend in the dynamic setting of a garden labyrinth has lots going for it as Atrocious races into its final act, but it’s ultimately undone when the secret is revealed and prime opportunities for scares are missed.
Cristian (Cristian Valencia) and Debora (Chus Pereiro) face a fate any teenager can sympathize with: the parentally mandated vacation to an isolated location with none of the typical amenities kids of a younger generation typically enjoy. What their parent’s cabin (the subtitles call it a cabin, but it’s a pretty posh plantation – so something got lost in translation) does have, is a spooky story of a girl in a red hood that supposedly wanders about the labyrinthine garden around the estate. Their parents tell them they’re not to go exploring in the garden, but that just fuels their curiosity and really there was no chance they weren’t going to go inside. After all, we’re watching footage of their efforts to capture the elusive phantom on camera. After a couple of days of exploring the winding pathways, the family dog goes missing and the events that follow make it absolutely clear the area isn’t as isolated as they’d originally thought.
Quite frankly, the story initially proposed would not only have been more fulfilling, it would have made the extensive night-vision sequence, which makes up the majority of the thriller aspect of the film’s last act, much more atmospheric and scary. In their investigation into the red hooded girl and the different versions of her story, some of which label her as a savior of the lost and others which call her a murderous siren, they’re told that her moaning gradually gets louder and that just as you think it’s in front of you – she’s actually at your back. The script and camerawork did an excellent job of setting up huge potential payoff for a truly frightening scene of panic as the two teens scramble for their survival in the labyrinth in the dead of night.
Unfortunately, after all that set up there’s nothing. The “moaning”, even in the context of the film’s ending, could still have worked, but it’s never used. Ever. Horror enthusiasts will eagerly be awaiting that added element of creepiness to seep into the soundscape of the teenagers’ fear, but it never comes. So unless you’re frightened by the haggard breathing and repeated expletives of the leads as they run about with only a small area of the pathway illuminated by their camera’s night vision function, then you’re going to be quite disappointed. Irritated even, because that impaired vision adequately succeeds in frustrating the audience with how little they can see of what’s going on (which was the intention), and so if the film wanted to play with our heads they would have made what appeared in that narrow scope of vision occasionally terrifying or, as previously suggested, paired it with the unnerving wail of a legendary phantom. It’s a maddening waste of build-up on the filmmakers’ part, and it only gets worse when you see what they chose to go after instead.
Before you scream spoiler, at a certain point, it becomes absolutely clear that there is in fact some force in the darkness. That’s just a core part of the story, and there’s nothing spoilerish about it. Exactly what that force is revealed to be, ruins all the hard work and doesn’t feel clever. Rather, it makes you wonder why someone would go through all that trouble to establish an atmosphere and a frustratingly, but effectively claustrophobic viewpoint only to make it inconsequential in light of the truth. If anything the film would have benefited greatly from going in the opposite direction, implying a more basic immediate threat only to reveal it as benign in the face of a supposedly mythic terror. That idea sounds more cliché, but it’s the way it was filmed and the disorienting setting of the labyrinth that gave Atrocious any of the potential it ever had.
DVD Bonus Features
A production featurette is the only extra to speak of and once again, like with Phase 7, there's the option for an English dub which should be avoided.
"Atrocious" is on sale October 25, 2011 and is rated R. Horror, Thriller. Written and directed by Fernando Barreda Luna. Starring Chus Pereiro, Cristian Valencia, Clara Moraleda.
