Rating: C+
Dir: Eduardo Schuldt
Star: Rodrigo Falla, Daniella Mendoza, Carlos Casella, Mario Gaviria
a.k.a. La Entidad
Spookily, I ended up watching this the night before the entirely unrelated Babs Hershey film with exactly the same title. Coincidence? Or something more sinister???? As mentioned earlier, this one was also pushed back a couple of weeks, in deference to Chris’s sensitivities. She and found footage do not mix well, and the first few minutes featured some of the shakiest of shaki-cam footage I’ve seen. So The Entity got tabled until a night when Chris was out. I got through most of it before she returned, and she started stolidly at her phone for the balance, opting not to make eye-contact with the screen. To be fair, it wasn’t all so bad, but we’ll get to that.
This comes from Peru, a country I’ve been aware of since I was a small child. My first encounter was as the original home of Paddington, hero in one of my favourite series of books as a child, back before I realized he was actually an economic migrant. [I really must get round to watching the movies, which I’ve heard are very good] You could likely still tell me Peru is the world’s largest producer of marmalade, and I’d believe you. Less pleasant was the encounter at the 1978 World Cup. That was the “Ally’s Tartan Army” squad, when we were convinced were the best Scottish team ever. Right up until Peru beat us 3-1 in their first game. Screw you, Paddington.
Since then, my encounters with the country have mostly been through the cinema of Werner Herzog, in particular Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both largely shot on location in Peru. But the country has also made its own movies. The earliest horror film I can find in the IMDb dates from 1975, and is called The Inquisitor. It seems influenced by the likes of Witchfinder General, though going by the IMDb, the women who are tortured end up being genuine witches. It’s not the only intriguing title. I also am curious to see 2022’s Qarqacha: El Demonio del Incesto, which beyond its title has this synopsis: “Three students, researching poverty, come face to face with a were-llama in a small Peruvian village.” Yes: were-llama. It’s on YouTube. Stay tuned.
Anyway, on to this, which appears to be a bit of a departure for director Schuldt, who also came up with the idea for Sandro Ventura’s script. The rest of his filmography seems heavily skewed towards animated film for kids, with titles such as The Nutcracker Sweet. This, instead, is not only horror, it’s the first Peruvian horror film to be made in 3D. I honestly did not know that at the time of viewing, and it’s not obvious (though thinking about it, dialogue references to a 3D camera now make more sense). It definitely does not need 3D for its impact, which is a good thing – although the one movie gimmick Chris hates more than shaki-cam is 3D. It may be the first such found footage film, coming out the year before the aptly-named Found Footage 3D.
It’s about a group of students, tasked with making a documentary, who decide to do so on the topic of “reaction videos”. They find one online, which has a trio of people watching something, clearly horrified by what they see. But on further investigation, they discover all three of the viewers mysteriously died shortly after. They find the brother of one, who takes them to a graveyard which played a part in the incident, only for him to suffer a gruesome demise at the hands – or claws – of something. Something with a grudge, particularly against Catholics, as we discover later. And something which now has a new set of victims in its sights, in the shape of the documenting students.
Thankfully, the first five minutes, of wobbly running through graveyards at night, is not representative of the film as a whole. Sure, it does contain its fair share of that kind of thing. It’s a style which left me thoroughly unmoved at the time of The Blair Witch Project, and hasn’t improved with age. Indeed, with the approach having been done to death, if anything it has lost whatever impact it had. The torrent of footage of every event now available on social media, now renders as so much background noise. The content really has to stand out to make any impression, good or bad, in a world of near-infinite scrolling. Glances across at Chris, still staring resolutely at her phone. You think it would make the found-footage movie obsolete. Apparently not.
It does a somewhat better job of the characters and their relationships, with probably only one of the students being particularly annoying: given the track record, 25% is very much a passing grade. The focus is mostly on occasional couple Joshua (Falla) and Carla (Mendoza), with support from geeky Lucas (Casella) and the 25%-er, Benjamin (Gaviria). With the concept of a cursed video, it plays a little like Ringu, though does enough new with the idea to separate itself. The Entity does manage some decent sequences, mostly when it stops waving the camera around and concentrates on the basics. A relatively stable section sees Carla and Joshua visiting the college library, looking for a book to provide narrative. It doesn’t go well, and is nicely handled by Schuldt.
I was also surprised by the presence of some genuine special effects – not many, but they are present – and I would say, these are better than usual for the sub-genre. Overall, I might say the same for the movie overall. The plot is an improvement on most, and you don’t get the sense, which happens all too often, that the makers are using the gimmick as a crutch for poverty-row movie-making. It would still likely be better done as straight narrative, abandoning the conceit of people who keep cameras glued to their eyeballs in the face of death. However, given my prejudices, I didn’t hate this, and that’s more than I expected from the way this opened.
This review is part of our October 2024 feature, 31 More Countries of Horror.