This new Mexican horror movie from Argentinian Adrián García Bogliano is an interesting, if not entirely successful, little shocker. The film opens with a steamy sex scene and continues along that path, showing two parents indulging in some enthusiastic digital-penetration while their kids play around on the hills (and, more crucially, in the caves nestled amongst them). When night falls, the children are nowhere to be seen and the parents are understandably anxious. While they have been indulging in their carnal pleasures, their loved ones have disappeared.
But all turns out fine, at least temporarily, as the children are handed back to their parents by the police seemingly safe and healthy. For a while, things look as if they will go back to normal. However – and there is always a ‘however’ in films like this – as the movie progresses it becomes clear something strange happened to the kids the night they vanished. At first it looks like it’s sexual abuse, but this is pushed aside for even weirder, more supernatural horrors, the kind of which one needs a strong stomach and a very open imagination to watch.
The film’s visual style and cinematography is hot and dusty and wonderfully realised. The story is less disciplined and takes a turn for the hysterical in the final act. Even though hysteria is quite often the name of the game with over-the-top 70s homages like this film, the plot struggles to hold the pieces together and risks losing the audience’s patience along the way.
Here Comes the Devil (2013), directed by Adrián García Bogliano, is released on DVD by Metrodome, Certificate 18.
