Monday, March 4, 2013

Turistas (2006)




This is another film that seems to be going in the trend of the dark and creepy torture film vein, in a Hostel-in-Brazil sort of way. The story focuses on eight tourists from various Western countries who meet in Brazil after their tour bus has a horrible accident which leaves them stranded in a very out-of-the-way place.

After discovering a beachside bar that appears to be heaven on earth for the wary travelers, we get about twenty minutes of tiny bikinis and drunken dancing. This all ends with the tourists waking up on the beach to face a foreign traveler’s worst nightmare – they’ve been robbed of all their money, clothing, and identification and left alone in a strange place.

But we already know what happens next. Dispersed throughout the scenes of bitching about vacationing mishaps and drinking, we’ve been given plenty of information to know that the locals suspect Western tourists are responsible for kidnapping children and using them for organ harvesting. So it’s no surprise that it’s payback time and our unfortunate tour party are being considered as walking donors.

The interesting angle being that the people involved in this evil plot have to lure the tourists in while keeping them alive, and we’re shown exactly how ticked off the head surgeon can get if those precious organs go to waste. The surgery scene is adequately gruesome, and just the horror of someone being forced to watch their friend get cut up like that is certainly disturbing.

I think my favorite scene was a unique underwater cave chase, which was shot well and was pretty creepy to think about running out of air while running (er, swimming) away from the villain.

On the visual horror level, Turistas doesn’t quite cut it along the same lines as Hostel or the Saw series. But it does try to make up for this by way of suspense.

Film information: Turistas




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