Director: Stuart Gordon
Year: 2001
Country: Spain
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After crashing their yacht off the Spanish coast, a man goes ashore and begins searching for help in the nearby village but finds the inhabitants holding a deadly secret and start to chase him for use in a secret ceremony for one of their rituals forcing him to find a way out of the town alive.
Review:
This here was a rather fun and entertaining effort that has a lot going for it. One of the best areas in this one is the fact that it contains a rather remarkable sense of atmosphere and dread that works incredibly well, giving this one quite an imposing feature that gets under your skin and comes out very creepy and unnerving. Though this is almost certainly helped along by the near-incessant driving rain bearing down on everything here, several solid points come from the look of the residents with their pale skin, fishy features, and unblinking eyes that follow him throughout the town which itself is quite a marvel, to the different areas of their religion set-up around town dedicated to the mysterious figure of their study and it really gives off a rather imposing atmosphere. There's some more of that impressive and noticeable eeriness here in the town of Imboca which is also a very great town with its small buildings, old-fashioned style and narrow streets, it does look like a turn-of-the-century fishing town.
It has a creepy look to it that really sells the film, and is quite a marvel. This is helped along quite nicely by the film's high action content which is far more involved than expected and gets out some rather fun action scenes in here which gives this one plenty to like. The main highlight is the chase through town from the abandoned hotel with the mass of creatures coming after him in a never-ending series of ambushes, encounters and close escapes that starts off with him in the hotel to the battle down into the basement where he has to get away from the freaks inside the great series of brawls leading to get away as well as the stand-out car-chase out of town which has plenty of fun about it and really makes for the highlight-worthy tag.
This fine extended action is really helped along with the temple confrontation that goes for the great sacrifice scene and the big final confrontation where they reveal the truth about it all makes for a hugely enjoyable series of scenes. As well, with the extreme gore that features a lot of rather cool special effects and nudity on display, these here are the film's best points. There are only a few minor flaws here, which comes from the fact that it really only gets weak at the end with the CGI-created being they worship providing some really atrocious and laughable quality work here that just becomes really obvious and clashes with the film's more serious tone elsewhere. As well, there's the film's tendency to focus on weirdness for the sake of being weird to generate comedy that was totally unneeded, most notably a rather confusing point involving him breaking his glasses and being rendered unable to see. Otherwise, this one is highly enjoyable.
Overview: ****/5
One of the more underrated and enjoyable adaptations to be found out there, there's quite a lot to like here against only a few minor flaws that don't have much in the way of flaws to bring it down. Give this a look if you enjoy this kind of film or a fan of the creative crew, while only those who don't appreciate the style of film should heed caution.
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