A nation’s 2020 vision: is this the year that Argentine genre cinema arrives? first published (under a different title) by Through the Trees, 14 December 2020. Includes capsules of: The Returned; The Funeral Home; History of the Occult; Murder Me, Monster Way back in 1997, Pablo Parés and Hernán Sáez directed and starred in Argentina’s…
On The 3rd Day (Al Tercer Día) at Grimmfest 2021 (note that this film was based on the English dubbed version; a subtitled version of the film is also available) Daniel de la Vega‘s previous White Coffin (Ataúd Blanco: El Juego Diabólico, 2016) began with a mother in a car with her young daughter, fleeing…
Dead End (Punto Muerto) first published by Rue Morgue Dead End (Punto Muerto) opens in 1907, in room 217 of the Deja Vu Hotel, where blind Marie Rathbone (Maria Eugenia Rigon), typing braille at her desk, is attacked by masked criminal mastermind The Wraith, who first stabs her with a rapier blade, and then strikes…
“Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina 2101 AD”, reads the caption that opens I Am Toxic (Soy tóxico) as we witness a sea of corpses in an arid landscape, and hear the sound of buzzing, feeding flies. A middle-aged, bearded man (Esteban Prol) wakes in their midst, and if we are disoriented by all that we…
Every so often a film comes along that knows exactly what it is, but proves adept at throwing viewers off the scent. White Coffin (or Ataúd Blanco: El Juego Diabólico) is just such a film, gleefully steering us down familiar-seeming roads, before taking every twisted dirt path and circuitous detour it can find, so that…