Review: Atrocious is a worthy companion thriller to the Paranormal Activity genre
(3 And A Half out of 5 stars)
Mexican filmmaker Fernando Barreda Luna draws inspiration from past horror classics The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity for his first feature Atrocious, a worthy, Spanish-language addition to the found footage genre. Atrocious is also a bold debut for Luna who helped edit the film, composed its creepy score and co-produced the horror feature via his Mexican production company Nabu Films. Making its North American Premiere in the Narrative Competition section of the 2011 Slamdance Film Fest, Atrocious follows in the path of Paranormal Activity, which wowed Slandance audiences at the same Treasure Mountain screening room just a few years earlier. Granted, Atrocious may not pack as many jolts as Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch but its fast pace, clever storytelling and convincing lead performances make the film a solid thriller in its own right and a quality take on the reality horror genre.
Teenage siblings July and Cristian Quintanilla Atauri travel to their family’s sprawling summerhouse outside the coastal town of Sitges, Spain for a holiday gathering. July and Cristian are amateur paranormal investigators and during their visit they investigate the surrounding grounds with their video camera in search of clues involving a local legend about the Girl in the Garraf Woods, the ghost of a young girl who presumably fell down the well on the property and died. The bloody fate of the brother and sister paranormal detectives as well as their entire family become clearer thanks to the found video footage left behind at the bloody crime scene. Well, that’s the premise of Luna’s fun movie.
Cinematographer Ferran Castera makes dramatic use of the grainy video footage, natural lighting and shaky, handheld P.O.V. images. To Castera’s credit, Atrocious has the look and feel of a home movie shot by a teenager who’s just learning to use his video camera. Luna and co-editors David Gallart, Bernat Vilaplana shape the “37 hours” of found footage into a swift 75 minutes. Well-positioned jolts and swift glimpses of shocking violence keep the storytelling tense from start to finish.
Found footage horror continues to be a popular genre thanks to the recent success of Paranormal Activity 2 and Barreda makes a solid contribution to the movement with Atrocious. The key shocks and scares involving strange occurrences at the labyrinth outside the summerhouse unfold at a fast clip. The climactic bloodletting, while mostly off-screen, feels uncomfortably real. Granted, there are moments when the found footage format and the constant P.O.V. camerawork become a deterrent to the action. Thankfully, Luna and his co-editors find clever solutions for keeping Cristian and his sister on-camera for much of the movie.
The Blair Witch Project remains an original work that helped launch a genre and Paranormal Activity stands out as the best of the found footage horror movies. Director Fernando Barreda Luna pays homage to both of those classic horror films while contributing an original, Latino-influenced story to the faux horror documentary genre. It’s to Barreda’s credit that Atrocious offers something new to horror fans that consider the Paranormal Activity films personal favorites instead of feeling like a tired copycat of something done earlier.
Distributor: TBD Available from Nabu Films
Director: Fernando Barreda Luna
Scriptwriter: Fernando Barreda Luna
Cinematographer: Ferran Castera
Cast: July Quintanilla, Cristian Quintanilla
Editor: David Gallart, Bernat Vilaplana, Fernando Barreda Luna Running Time: 75 minutes
Producers: Nabu Films
Rating: TBD
Release Date: TBD