Some almost spoilers, but I rewrote this to avoid stating who is the killer.
This film played as the closing event at the 2003 Ottawa Chilean Film Festival under the English Title of "Dark Angel". It is an unimaginative regurgitation (a carefully chosen word given the director's extended shots of toilets and vomiting) of cliche's taken from the worst kind of US horror flic. Even the fact that the survivor is a woman - the cliche of the final girl - was a standard item in the 1970s. It was old when it was used in Alien I. But, unlike even many trash horror films, she doesn't earn her survival, she is rescued by the policeman. The killings by knifing are gratuitous, and could have been left out of the frame. On the other hand if you go to this kind of film to see bodies cut open, you will feel teased. The music is overdramatic, the motivation is unexplained, and there is no subtext to compensate. The horror could be taken as a type of the "the monstrous feminine", but it is of an unthinking male heterosexuality that was more appropriate to the middle twentieth century. It does not have the self-reflexivity of a Wes Craven, or the sly self-subversion of a Hitchcock.
If you want an imaginative horror film from world cinema, there is of course the incredible 'Ringu'. If you specifically want Chilean horror, go see 'The Others' or even 'Tetis' by Alejandro Amenábar. The latter is only a weak film, but it is better than 'Dark Angel'. What is this nonsense about this film being the first Chilean horror film - by location and financing maybe. Not by director.
Why does the killer kill the bank security guard with such ferocity? The guard is an innocent bystander. Given the crudity of the costume, how could the killer get into the suite of the politician's son by claiming to be his girlfriend?
I had figured out the killer by the killing of the politician's son. Look at the person's stride.
What is the purpose of the extended shot from above as the survivor vomits into the toilet bowl? How does it advance the story, and wouldn't a quick suggestive shot in fact have been more effective?
This film played as the closing event at the 2003 Ottawa Chilean Film Festival under the English Title of "Dark Angel". It is an unimaginative regurgitation (a carefully chosen word given the director's extended shots of toilets and vomiting) of cliche's taken from the worst kind of US horror flic. Even the fact that the survivor is a woman - the cliche of the final girl - was a standard item in the 1970s. It was old when it was used in Alien I. But, unlike even many trash horror films, she doesn't earn her survival, she is rescued by the policeman. The killings by knifing are gratuitous, and could have been left out of the frame. On the other hand if you go to this kind of film to see bodies cut open, you will feel teased. The music is overdramatic, the motivation is unexplained, and there is no subtext to compensate. The horror could be taken as a type of the "the monstrous feminine", but it is of an unthinking male heterosexuality that was more appropriate to the middle twentieth century. It does not have the self-reflexivity of a Wes Craven, or the sly self-subversion of a Hitchcock.
If you want an imaginative horror film from world cinema, there is of course the incredible 'Ringu'. If you specifically want Chilean horror, go see 'The Others' or even 'Tetis' by Alejandro Amenábar. The latter is only a weak film, but it is better than 'Dark Angel'. What is this nonsense about this film being the first Chilean horror film - by location and financing maybe. Not by director.
Why does the killer kill the bank security guard with such ferocity? The guard is an innocent bystander. Given the crudity of the costume, how could the killer get into the suite of the politician's son by claiming to be his girlfriend?
I had figured out the killer by the killing of the politician's son. Look at the person's stride.
What is the purpose of the extended shot from above as the survivor vomits into the toilet bowl? How does it advance the story, and wouldn't a quick suggestive shot in fact have been more effective?
