Rating: D
Dir: Gabriel Grieco
Star: Luz Cipriota, Amin Yoma, Juan Palomino, Nicolás Pauls
a.k.a. Naturaleza Muerta
I’m not 100% sure about the translation from a Spanish title which means “Dead nature”, with something apparently lost in the English version. This was promoted as the first vegan horror film in cinema history, and I can see why. Like most vegan imitations, it’s not as good as the target, and you’ll likely be left craving the real thing. The heroine here is Jazmín Alsina (Cipriota), an ambitious TV journalist, who is unhappy about being given an assignment which is literally bullshit. She’d rather be investigating the mysterious disappearance of a young woman in the area, so sneaks off from her cameraman to the house in question. And, what are the odds, immediately finds the victim’s wallet! Argentinian police suck.
In the area, she also meets Dan (Yoma), an earnest activist who is trying to convert the locals to his vegan cause; Gerardo (Pauls), the next-door neighbour who seems to know more about the missing person than he lets on; or cattle rancher José Aymar, who has no time for progressive causes. It should be absolutely obvious who among these people is behind the disappearance. Naturally, it takes Jazmin far longer than the audience to figure it out, despite her rather loose approach to journalistic ethics. She has no issues with breaking into houses for her story, and when she finds a dead body, doesn’t bother informing the authorities, only calling her cameraman.
The corpse naturally vanishes before he arrives, because of course it does. Fortunately, there ends up being CCTV footage to prove her claim, because of course there is. What feels like a rejected episode of Scooby-Doo eventually approaches something close to horror at the end, when the various disappeared parties are dispatched by their captor – albeit only after having to watch a video of mondo slaughterhouse footage. This comes over as not more than a cheap attempt to shock, and barely distracted me from my doner kebab. In contrast, Jazmin is not immediately dispatched, because of course she isn’t. This leads to a bit of stalk ‘n’ slash, before the sudden arrival of an armed cop out of nowhere as resolution, because of course he must.
I guess the film deserves credit for a reversal of the usual trope in these “rural nightmare” films, where the victims are typically slaughtered as meat, rather than because they eat it. But this lacks the raw intensity and commitment to its message necessary, with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre likely a more effective argument that “Meat is murder.” The characters in general, and Jazmin in particular, are mostly annoying, and the story unfolds at a sluggish pace. There’s then a dumb and unnecessary coda tacked on the end after Jasmin’s ending monologue, which is about as heartfelt and honest as a Jerry Springer final thought. To riff off another recently reviewed South American movie made the same year, this is far closer to spam instead of tenderloin.