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| Images courtesy of Cleopatra Entertainment |
In 1985 on the tourist village Villa Epecuén in the Buenos
Aires Province, Argentina, a rare weather phenomenon destroyed a dam followed
by a dike protecting the village, flooding the village with water rising 33
feet above sea level. The once booming village
housing hundreds of businesses, hotels and guest houses became an uninhabitable
derelict ruin. With nothing but
driftwood, broken down structures and abandoned buildings, naturally, such an
eerie but beautiful ghost town on the precipice of the water would become a hotspot
for filming horror movies, starting in 2010 with the remake of the 1970 film And
Soon the Darkness starring Karl Urban and Amber Heard.
In 2017, exploitation/horror and giallo-infused Argentinian
brothers Nicolás and Luciano Onetti dropped viewers into a transgressive The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of The Hills Have Eyes inspired
thriller set within Villa Epecuén called What the Waters Left Behind which
saw a documentary film crew trying to make a picture on Epecuén being
terrorized by murderous inbred miscreants.
While that film exploited the terrain beautifully with drone photography,
looming and gliding over the ruins, it also maybe went too far in some
instances with some in your face shocks that are better left unseen. Immediately thereafter the duo teamed up
again for the giallo inspired flick Abrakadabra before returning to the
dreaded Villa Epecuén once more in 2022 with the loose, slightly more polished
companion piece What the Waters Left Behind: Scars.
Ditching much of the language barriers and plot constraints
of the first film including an abstract prologue shot on lower end digital
video that looks like a separate short film plugged into a feature, having a
mostly English-speaking international cast of Anglo-American indie rockers
stumbling upon the Villa Epecuén, What the Waters Left Behind: Scars softens
the edges of some of the more offending areas of the first film while
sharpening others to uncomfortable new heights.
While every bit as gnarly as the first film, going in deep for practical
effects crimson pandemonium, it stays just this far on the side of the tracks
to keep average genre horror fans from shutting the thing off. Mostly, as before, the film’s drone
photography plays like an aerial travelogue of the once populated villa,
sometimes drifting and hanging over spots or rising from the hood of the band’s
van to show the barren dilapidated backdrop surrounding it.
While
the first film was penned by both Onetti brothers with Carlos Goitia, this time
the task goes to Camilo Zaffora who also wrote the Onettis’ upcoming
science-fiction horror film The Last Boy on Earth. Still, these films aren’t known for their
writing as much as showing off the makeup practical effects talents of Yanel
Castellano, María Fernanda Curci and Sabrina Toledo who adorn the cast members
with a wide variety of gruesome costumes and gore effects. The film also brings back the adversaries
from the first film, albeit with some roles switched around and a couple of new
additions including fitness trainer David Michigan as an oversized deformed
monster. What this new film does right,
however, is knowing what to show and what not to. For as repugnant as things get in this movie,
it doesn’t stoop anywhere near as low as its predecessor does with one scene
late into the first nearly deep sixing the whole thing.
More
about the setting and the effects than characters which are your stereotypical
oversexed hot heads with a raspy female singer before the film starts repeating
many of the high watermarks of Tobe Hooper’s immortal horror classic, What
the Waters Left Behind: Scars is an uneven but mostly entertaining horror
film that manages to unsettle and transgress without completely alienating its
audience in the process. I myself am
admittedly new to the Onetti brothers who seem to be making their mark in the
international indie horror scene and seeing this new entry from the brothers
has piqued my interest in Abrakadabra as well as Francesca which
can be seen on one of the t-shirts worn by a cast member from the first
film.
While
far from reinventing the horror wheel, the Onettis’ spirits seem to lie in
Italian horror and/or giallo with elements of the slasher film and their reverence
for the genre is infectious. Yes What
the Waters Left Behind: Scars is cheap throwaway horror trash but I never
heard of Villa Epecuén until this film came about, proving to be something of
an educational experience in the process of smashing heads in with barb wired
clubs. For all of its cheap tawdry
awfulness, Villa Epecuén is a strangely beautiful setting for a horror movie
and one wonders whether or not what kind of overarching cumulative impact such
a unique setting will have on not just horror movies but films in general. There’s a lot you can do here and the Onettis
figured out a way to do movies there twice.
--Andrew Kotwicki
