Rating: D
Dir: Jhon Jatenjor
Star: Tiffany López Chayawong, Kevin Beltrán, Maury Gutiérrez, Martha Isabel Barajas Anaya
This Colombian film was a candidate for 31 More Countries of Horror, losing out because… Well, as the grade above suggests, it isn’t very good. The most obvious flaw is audio which sounds like it was recorded on an iPhone 3, stuck underneath a bucket in the corner of a particularly unacoustic bathroom. Thanks heavens for English subtitles, even the poorly translated ones here, because I’m not sure I could have made out a single sentence. It’s impressively grating soundwise, to the point I gave serious consideration to giving up. Yet here we are, because Jatenjor does have an okay eye for framing and imagery, when it comes to generating spooky atmosphere.
This makes it a somewhat more interesting film to watch than to listen to. The story concerns a public library in the city of Cúcuta, up by the border with Venezuela. In the indigenous language, Kuku-ta means “House of the Goblin”, which might be the starting point for a better horror movie some day. The library used to be a mental hospital – yeah, I rolled my eyes at that – and ever since the conversion has been, inevitably, plagued by mysterious incidents and unexplained deaths. These have now grown to such an extent, official action needs to be taken, with a team of seven “paranormal mercenaries” (top), under Alfredo Portilla (Gutiérrez), going into the library to investigate. Naturally, it doesn’t end well, as they encounter the demon Agramon (played by the director) within the stacks.
It’s all very basic, not least because it takes it’s sweet time getting to the crux of the matter. The team don’t reach the library until the 40-minute mark, and the end credits start not long after the hour mark. Before then, you get a lot of chit-chat, including people discussing their personal opinions on the supernatural, unconvincing phone calls and those spooky events in the library. The seven investigators are not very credible: all are apparently under the age of 30, and act like it too. While armed, this seems a bad move since they possess the gun discipline of child soldiers: I literally flinched when their leader started waving a gun around to emphasize his points during the pre-mission briefing.
Things are equally primitive in the library, where the effects appear to come from the Georges Méliès era. For example, Agramon walks up to a set of bars, and switch to a slightly different angle of him walking away from them. Or someone goes into a toilet cubicle: cut, and they are miraculously no longer in there. It’s almost endearingly naive. The final method of disposal of Agramon is a bit of a cheat too: it’s only when we get a subsequent scene which explains why these bullets work, not anyone else’s. This is Jatenjor’s feature debut, and he has put the whole thing with subs up on YouTube in a “director’s cut”. I’d probably rather have seen somebody else’s. But it’s a start and I hope he learns from this, and develops. Buying a mic would help.