Rating: C+
Dir: Mariano Cattaneo
Star: Sol Wainer, Byron Barbieri, Román Almaraz, Leonel Romero
a.k.a. Nadie va a escuchar tu grito
The Argentinians certainly love their football. And their horror movies. And combining the two. This would make a good double-bill with 1978, which unfolded against the backdrop of the World Cup final that year, between the host country and the Netherlands. Here, we are a dozen years later, with Argentina again making their way through the 1990 version of the tournament, to a final against West Germany. [Not a mention of it also being Scotland’s most recent appearance!] But during the games for the team, with everyone engrossed in watching the match on television, at home or in bars, a masked killer takes the chance to commit a particularly brutal murder during each contest.
It feels as if the authorities are more interested in football as well, because the cops are largely notable by their absence here. Instead, it’s up to Micaela Silva (Wainer) to figure out who is the killer. She works in her father’s record shop, and has a sideline creating custom mix-tapes for the customers there [I’m going to guess neither Blondie nor Talking Heads were exactly big in Argentina at that time, going by the way she refers to them!]. The store also repairs electronics, and on an answering machine belonging to one murder victim, she hears a menacing call apparently from the killer. And in the background she hears a song only available on one of her mix-tapes.
While this is a fairly standard slasher film, it’s done with a decent amount of effort, and that helps avoid it falling into the quagmire of over-familiar tropes. Mica and her friends, such as Tomás Bossio (Barbieri) and Carlos Villagra (Almaraz), are presented as regular and relatable people, rather than the usual young people, interested only in getting laid and/or high. So if the plot isn’t anything especially novel, you find yourself caring when they are in peril, such as the inevitable confrontation between Mica and the psycho (top). This also gives us the first case I know of Chekhov’s Speaker. The killings are well spaced over the course of the movie, and quite well-executed, with the murderer seeming to prefer enthusiastic bludgeoning as his modus operandi.
I did feel there was potential left unexplored. There’s never a particular relationship to the football, like the killer being a disgruntled referee or something. And for a film where both music and the specific era plays such a central role… Well, maybe Blackrain and Blue Summer were big locally at the time, that’s the kindest thing I can say. Though I understand licensing costs for anything recognizable from the era were probably prohibitive, especially considering the current Argentinian economy. In some ways, this feels like a throwback to the days of Scream, though (mercifully) without the same smug meta-ness. The ending is clearly angling towards a sequel, with the killer’s identity uncertain. Maybe that’ll take place during the 1994 World Cup? Though Argentina didn’t even make the quarter-finals there!