Terrified (Aterrados)

Cast

Maximiliano Ghione

Norberto Gonzalo

Elvira Onetto

George Lewis

Agustín Rittano

Critic Reviews for Terrified (Aterrados)

Audience Reviews for Terrified (Aterrados)

• Jan 07, 2019

  You know, I've never been once to mince words. If I think a movie is awful, I'm gonna point it out and shout it from the highest mountain for all to read (all eight of you on Letterboxd). I feel that it's my responsibility, even if I don't actually get paid for this and just do it for my own personal enjoyment and sanity, to be as honestly as humanly possible as I can within my abilities. Which, of course, is very little, since I'm terrible at this. That's why I must say, in all honesty, that I do not know what to make of this movie. You may think that this is a weird statement, given that this is a fairly straightforward haunted house(s) film and the paranormal investigators that attempt to figure out what's happening in this neighborhood or, at the very least, in three of the houses in this neighborhood. As far as I'm concerned, the horror in this movie is actually really fucking good all things considered, as there's some legitimately creepy moments and the movie does build well to its horror. The problem comes in the fact that I really do think that the narrative is quite a fucking mess. I think everything leading up to the paranormal investigators staying in the houses, separately, is perfectly fine, fairly standard even. Three houses in this Argentinian neighborhood have experienced strange paranormal activities. In each case, the paranormal incidents end up taking the life of, I believe, three people, each belonging to one of the houses that are haunted. Blumetti's wife is brutally murdered by this unseen entity that slams her back and forth on her bathroom wall. Walter disappears after being haunted by these apparitions. Alicia's son is run over by this truck after he's scared off by Walter, who warned him not to come near his house. Moving forward a bit, it turns out that Alicia's young son dug his own way out of his grave and made his way home. This is what starts off the series of incidents that leads to Jano, Dr. Allbreck and Rosentok (who literally came out of nowhere, for no real reason) investigating what went on in these houses. I think this is when the movie really does kind of fall apart in spite of giving us some really strong horror if you were to just look at it out of context. If you look at the horror in this movie, without the context of what's happening or why, then you'd think to yourself as to how I could have mixed thoughts on this movie. The reason for that is that things seem to happen at random with no real narrative reason or explanation given to justify all of what's happening. They're incredibly vague about these things being the cause of beings from another dimension and alternate realities that can converge in the same place at the same time, just depending on your point of view, quite literally. You close your left eye and the creature isn't there, close your right eye and it is, stuff like that. I literally have no idea what they were talking about and the fact of the matter is that the movie gets bogged down in this and it just detracts from what is quite good horror. Things happen to people and you're not exactly sure how they happened since you're off with another one of the investigators on their investigation. Jano has his eyes carved out or whatever and he's shoved into this wardrobe or something. Rosentok, after a while, just disappears without a trace and no real justification for his character even existing. I think the movie really wanted to be too cute for its own good with its play interdimensional beings existing multiple times in the same place, but different realities. It's a bunch of nonsense and it's not to the benefit of the movie. This isn't a movie like The Void, where they pepper in enough clues for you to connect the dots. And that's what this movie mostly reminds me of. A less effective version of The Void. The Void has better creature design, but I really do legitimately like the horror in this movie. I just wish it wasn't surrounded by such a clumsily written second and third act that robbed the horror of all its impact. Maybe I'm one of the few that thought this, but I really did hate the scripting. I suppose I have to give them props for being ambitious and I must concede that. But ambition shouldn't be an excuse to put together such a confusing narrative after the investigators arrive at the houses. It's like you needed six eyes in order to keep up with everything that was going on in each individual house. That's not a feeling I should ever have and, ultimately, it's what caused me to give this the rating that I did. This is a really disappointing review to me because of that, because the ingredients for a really horror movie are there and you can see it from the start of the movie. There's some really creepy moments, particularly one really specific scene, I'm certain you'll know the one. It's a shame that their justification for these events happening is confusing, stuff happens off camera that you're never privy to. In short, like I mentioned earlier, it's sort of a fucking mess. This is still a very decent movie and it would have received a positive score had the script not been such nonsense. I'm certain most of you are gonna like this more than I did, but I just could not ignore the apparent in this movie. Decent movie, but not worth recommending due to its many flaws.
  Jesse O Super Reviewer

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