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Released by: Unearthed Fims
Released on: August 30th, 2016.
Director: Lex Ortega
Cast: Lex Ortega, Patricia Leih, Carlos Padilla, Julio Rivera, Carlos Valencia
Year: 2015
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The Movie:
Atroz (or Atrocious, in English, which is an entirely appropriate name) is the feature debut of writer/director Lex Ortega, who had previously made a series of short films in his native Mexico. The movie, which was the result of a successful crowdfunding campaign and produced by none other than Ruggero Deodato, is pretty grueling stuff but it's also very well made.
The premise is this - two men are driving through Mexico City. They get into an accident and the cops come. The men in the car are handcuffed and thrown in the back of the car. When the cops search the crime scene they find a video camera with a tape inside. Now confiscated as evidence, they take them back to the station to investigate, they realize that they've inadvertently found the home movies of a pair of malicious serial killers. As they watch the tapes, the cops witness all manner of rape, torture, sexual degradation, abuse both verbal and physical, and then ultimately murder.
Armed with some pretty hefty evidence, the cops interrogate the two men they've brought in, but as the interrogation becomes more intense and the movie flip-flops back and forth between what's on the tapes and what's happening in the present, we realize that there's more to all of this than we initially thought.
Let's get this out of the way first - Atroz is fucking gross. It really is. It's a disgusting movie - when it deals with horrible people doing horrible things, how could it not be? You could argue that it would be a scarier picture than it is if more were left to the imagination but it doesn't seem that Ortega was interested in scaring his audience so much as he was interested in really unnerving us, getting under our skin. Rape. Necrophilia. Genital mutilation. Fecal expulsions. Torture of every kind. It's all here and it's all shown unflinching, graphic detail. The best point of reference in this regard is August Underground: Mordum, but where Ortega's film differs quite drastically from Fred Vogel's epic faux-snuff picture is in the social commentary department.
We see early in the film that when one of the cops finds a gun in the glove compartment he keeps it. This isn't going into the evidence locker, it's going home with him. This is the beginning of a theme that runs throughout the movie, and that's the corruption of law enforcement and its effect on the populace of the director's homeland. While the serial killers are truly abhorrent here, the cops are not the good guys. In their own way, they're part of the problem, the corrupt system that the movie is clearly raging against.
The found footage material culled from the tape is as you'd expect it to be - faux snuff type material, shot haphazardly with a low end camera to give it the desired effect. The rest of the film is actually rather well lensed. The locations are captured well, keeping the picture's gritty aesthetic up front by giving us an impromptu tour of some authentic city locations. The acting is bold, very convincing stuff from all involved. The message does get lost in the atrocity exhibit in spots, but there's actually a decent story told here and a pretty great finish to the movie. Those with a taste for the kind of underground horror pictures that really push things to the limit will appreciate what Ortega goes for here.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Unearthed Films brings Atroz to Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. There are scenes that are made to intentionally look rough, the 'found footage' sequences that are used throughout the movie, but those sequences aside this looks quite good. Shot digitally the image is as clean as you could hope for and there's good detail here as well. With different cameras employed in the shoot things understandably will vary from scene to scene but the majority of the time the image is stable, nicely colorful, quite detailed and well authored. The found footage material is meant to look like tape sourced content, and it does, so you'll see noticeable quality drops when the movie goes in that direction. This is clearly evident in the screen caps below and was obviously a stylistic choice on the part of Ortega and company.
Audio options are provided in DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo tracks, both in Spanish, with optional subtitles available in English only. The 5.1 track is the more effective of the two, not only spreading the score around really effectively but also using the surround channels to do some interesting things with the sound effects used in some of the nastier scenes. The sound design here is very good and the lossless track makes the most of it. The subtitles are clean, clear, easy to read and free of any obvious typographical errors.
The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary track from Lex Ortega that you can listen to in either English or Spanish. It's a pretty informative talk as he discusses how he funded the film, some of the picture's more extreme content, casting the picture and working with the different actors, the locations and effects featured in Artoz and quite a bit more.
Also on hand are a few featurettes, the first of which is a four minute behind the scenes piece. It's pretty short but it gives you a quick look at what it was like on set while the movie was being made. Up next is a five minute video that takes us behind the scenes at LSD Studios to explain how the music featured in the movie was created and to explore who did what to make that happen. Also on hand is a four minute look at the practical special effects work that was used to create some of the particularly nasty moments that Ortega puts up on the screen in his movie.
The original fifteen minute short version of Artoz is included here. Most of what we see in this short film is also included in the feature length version that was made afterwards but it's interesting to see it in this context.
Rounding out the extras is a four minute crowd funding video that was used to get the picture financed, and a generously portioned still gallery. Animated menus and chapter selection are also included. As this is a combo pack release, the impressive digipack packaging also holds inside a DVD version of the film with identical extra features and the movie's complete soundtrack on a separate compact disc.
The Final Word:
Atroz is a tough watch, a decidedly unpleasant film but it succeeds in unsettling us with some seriously uncompromising nastiness. The performances are good - effectively convincing - and the technical merits of the Blu-ray release also very strong. Those who don't appreciate the more extreme side of underground horror likely won't find this appealing, but fans of challenging, brutal and yes, disgusting horror pictures will definitely go for this.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
