This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
... View MoreTrue to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
... View MoreGreat movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
... View MoreIt is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
... View MoreHoly mother of toast I am in physical pain after watching this collection of terribleness. This anthology is so bad that it gives physical pain, like getting nails through your stomach.I am going to go from the general to the particular, because... oh god...General: Why did you put the name of the short AFTER the shorts? It is a complete anomaly. Also the gory title cards look so incredibly bad my PS1 cried of nostalgia and were absolutely not necesary. Also the introduction is non existant... okay it exists... sort of. Is at the end of the film. Why? I really want to know why, please, explain it to me. It is driving me crazy on its pointlessness.1st Short - Tzompantli. For those not knowing, the tzompantli was an altar were aztecs exposed the heads of the enemies they killed in battle and/or sacrificed people. It had many motivations: in general intimidation while pleasing the gods. Specially intimidation. This one relates a short interview of a guy asking to know more about certain murders at a guy known for being with the narcs. It had a good setting, the dialog was decent even though the audio edition and their enunciation sucks hard, the actors tried at least and it was actually pretty interesting. It could have been a great feature film if they tried. As a short it lacks motivation, a conclution or a reason for us to care. It was fine at most, but it could have been so much more. (5/10)2nd Short - Jaral de Berrios. It litterally is an abandoned hacienda in Mexico, maybe the biggest we ever had and one of the best preserved. It has so much history inside its walls that I could write several paragraphs (and I am no expert). Why they decided to make it demonic I am not sure. (It is a paranormal hotspot for reasons beyond my knowledge) but this is, by far, the best short... and it had not horror to begin with: 2 robbers are escaping after stealing lot of gold, so they decide to hide in the hacienda, that one of them (injured) says is haunted. Female ghost kisses and kills him, made the other guy give her a very graphic and bloody cunnilingus and later hangs him. He must suck at oral.In general the acting is decent. The photography is divine, extraordinarelly delicious, the cinemathography, on the other hand, is okay at most. The dialog is pretty realistic by mexican standards. The sound design and music is not the best but not the worst. It could have been a decent horror film if it went into feature or a historic/horror film. (7/10)3rd short - Drena (Drain). I am not going to say a lot about this one, because it is so extremely dumb. A woman finds a dead guy that has a cigarrette, smokes it and imagines a demon that tells her to drain her sister's menstrual blood or to get her soul ripped out of her posterior if not done before 12 hours. Yes, that is the plot. Yes, the execution is just as dumb as you are imagining. And there is another demon at the end that is recorded in such a terrible way you thought this was supposed to be a comedy, but they decided to try to make it a horror and failed miserably. A extremely bad one, but comedy. Nothing works. (2/10)4th short - La cosa más preciada (the most precious thing). This one is, by far, the worst in the entire anthology. The alushes are mayan gnomes (around 30cm at most) that like to steal toys and socks. Someone somewhere got that info and understood "1 meter and a half diabolical beings that look like a lump of feces with huge genitalia, able to vomit yellow sleeping agent and that like to force dumb virgin damsels if they go to the forest" because that is exactly what happened in this short. The acting is forced, the dialog is horrible... SO HORRIBLE! ("I am not losing my virginity to a strawberry flavored condom!"), the cinemathography... has a filter attempting to make it look like recorded in a super 8 and failing miserably because it looks obviously terribly edited and they have cellphones and a 2014 sports car. The photography is horrible, the alushes look like excrement (literally and figuratively) and you get close ups of their genitals. lots of closeup of gnome/demon genitals... It is just disgusting. The horror is that someone agreed to act in this piece of non entertainment. (1/10 because IMDB does not believe in 0. The mayans are angry at you for that.)5th short - Lo que importa es lo de adentro (what matters is in the inside. Hur hur great joke. Not). A mother and her two kids (a boy and a sick girl) live at an appartment complex. In front of it... lives? a guy that looks like the lost son of a trash bag and a porcupine that kinda helps the mother. This one is just gutwrenching: It has kidnapping, canibalism, organ harvesting and necrophilia. Writing that last word surely put me into a government watchlist and I recommend to not think too much about it. The acting is decent, the sets are pretty good (although the lighting does not help) but the story has too little for it. It is really hard to watch. (3/10)6th short -Muñecas (dolls). Another one I am not going to talk about a lot... but this time it is because absolutely nothing happens. It tries to be artsy with a black and white filter, but absolutely nothing happens. No dialog, no action, no characters, no point. Totally expendable. (1/10)7th short - Siete veces siete (Seven times seven). If you immediately thought about the bible, congratulations! you got it. It is the schizophrenic terribly explained, horribly dealt with, terribly edited and with awful special effects made story of the really imposingly named conejo (rabbit) bringing someone from the death just to kill him again. It explains why he killed him twice, but it is not horrifying. Just a revenge tale... with zombies. A total waste of time. (2/10)8th and final short - Dia de los muertos (day of the dead). The story about a stripclub where all the strippers go mad for unexplained reasons were they kill the clientele. The plot is non-existant. The rest is decent, but without a plot it just goes flat. This one had potential if it just explained itself (4/10)Average: 3/10. Do not watch this under any circumstance. Seriously don't.
... View MoreI love anthologies, but this one is just awful. A few shorts are okay, but nothing really blew me away. Of course, some of the shorts are so terrible that I contemplated turning the whole thing off. Spoilers below.The worst of the bunch, for me, is ""La Cosa mas Preciada/The Most Precious Thing". It's cheesy, stupid, and worst of all has some weird crap nobody wants to see in a so-called rated 'R' film. Don't watch this anthology with your parents, children (no matter what age), or really anyone, honestly. This particular short literally has close- up shots of "aluxes" (troll/imp/whatever) penis. Yes, really. The whole short was cliché, couldn't pick a genre, and just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. My favorite short was "Jaral de Berrios". The cinematography here was really gorgeous, and there were some neat effects. However, it was so short that it didn't really explain anything or go into enough detail to make a big impact on the viewer. Overall, this anthology is really weak, and I can't recommend it. Give it a pass in favor of better options.
... View MoreHere are seven horror shorts that lack horror, premise, dialogue, even sound at times. The whole collection is completely uninspired, the stories are poorly developed and executed.While photography may rescue part of some of these shorts, some just come short of everything, just like high school projects. Harsh? Maybe. True? Completely. Take for instance "La Cosa Más Preciada (The Most Precious Thing), the acting is bad, the dialogues are hands down some of the worst I've ever heard in cinema history, the whole thing was given an instagram-like "vintage" filter. This one in particular is preposterous. The rest of the shorts, whilst more professional, are still pretty bad and absurd, there is no heart to be found. If the project was done by amateur kids, then fine, I'd give it 4 stars, but these are - self?- deemed- directors.Also, the only Mexican thing on this are the assets (directors, actors, writers, producers, settings), there are no real legends or myths in here, just perhaps loosely 'inspired from'.My conclusion is that a couple of Mexican rejects from 'ABC's of Death' decided to take matters in their own hands... disaster ensued of course.I must say I was very excited to watch this since I first heard of the project back in early 2014. I was looking forward to what 'indie' Mexican directors had up their sleeve since we practically have no recognized mainstream horror directors, but no, I cannot vouch for any of them.
... View MoreI see the old Mexican films the presence of a soul that inhabits a shadow or a ghost indefinable. I can not explain it, but sorry. When in any latest movie so I find myself realize that ghosts do not die, they live inside us, we are the memory of our ancestors. Each of the segments that make up Mexico Barbarian leads coined iron taste to it. I do not need to understand anything, just to see, hear, feel, shake. His characters are not dead but are no longer here, are trapped in the limbo of an apparent space, sliding down the imaginary walls of our mind. Gothic horror and gore manifest as living penalties. What is our identity? It is not defined but stands in mountains of death, carnal lust, blood sacrifice, the virginal naivety assault, slavery, disappearances, revenge and betrayal. Each of the films is falling on the table as tarot cards."Mexico Barbaro" has this great mysterious power that solves nothing, keeps us from understanding. However presents, through a huge skull radiography, a work of art that outlines the entire beautiful and sinister face of what we are: a nation built on the garden of a cemetery.
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