Rating: B+
Dir: Luciano Onetti, Nicolás Onetti
Star: Agustin Olcese, Paula Silva, Carlos Portaluppi, Mario Alarcón
Ever have the kind of nightmare where you’re trying to run away from something, only your legs feel like you’re stuck in quicksand? This delivers a similar experience: a slow descent into hell, where every corner brings a new horror. Things unfold over the night of the World Cup final in 1978, when everyone in Argentina was watching their team play the Netherlands. That includes the staff at a detention facility run by the military regime, where suspected enemies are brutally tortured and killed. However, information extracted under duress is not necessarily reliable. The resulting raid doesn’t capture Communists; instead, they bring back a group of occult practitioners, who were in the middle of a ritual.
This is where things go severely wrong, because for the Satanists, the change in venue is barely an inconvenience. Soon, all hell is breaking loose, literally, and the torturers now find themselves on the receiving end of some highly unpleasant treatment. The scene is set effectively, before we get to this, however, with a disturbing depiction of how brutality can become mundane and banal. Yet there’s nuance here too, with Miguel (Olcese) having qualms about the methods, which stand in sharp contrast to the callous indifference of his boss, Moro (Alarcón). This empathy could be his downfall though, since he tends to Irene (Silva), the highly pregnant woman who was “rescued” from the cultist altar. My use of quotes may or may not be significant.
It would be a solid piece of genre cinema, simply depicting day-to-day life in the facility. I’ve always tended to the view inhumanity is the worst kind of horror, e.g. Martyrs., and that’s present in spades here. Witness the scene where one of the interrogators forces two inmates to dig a grave, which increasingly looks likely to be their own. That said, there’s a point here where you suddenly realize how far out of their depth the torturers are, and you may find yourself feeling… well, if “sympathy” is a stretch, “pity” might not be out of line. No amount of training or experience, regardless of the brutality, could prepare anyone for what comes crawling out of… Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
The second half does descend somewhat into “slowly creeping around poorly-lit corridors”. If I was there, I like to thibk I’d be leaving skid marks and achieving orbital escape velocity. However, near-paralyzed by fear would seem a credible alternative. Outside of Miguel, there isn’t much depth to the characters, with the makers’ energy apparently having gone more toward brainstorming sick and twisted imagery. That aspect is highly successful, no doubt about it. Especially once the cult get their sacrificial act together, and recommence the ritual in the depths of the facility. I do have some questions about a couple of odd scenes which may be a flashback for Miguel, and more clarity would have been welcome there. In the main though, it’s the kind of film which might return to you in the middle of the night, accompanied by a cold sweat.
1978 was screened as part of Phoenix FearCon 2024.