Mortal skin

"Turistas" by John Stockwell on Moscow screens

There is an inaccuracy in the advertising slogan “Go home”, which appears on the film poster right on the girl’s forehead covered with panic sweat. In fact, not all local residents want young Europeans and Yankees traveling in Brazil to quickly go to their place of permanent residence. Some people really want other “touristas” to stay in Brazil forever. Well, or at least some parts of them.

Passengers on a bus traveling along the Brazilian coast from one point with an unpronounceable name to another get into an accident. No one was hurt, but you will have to wait ten hours for the next bus. And then, around the bend, two beauties appear, sipping something either cool or hot through a straw. Everything testifies: very close there is something like a center of culture and recreation. And it’s true: the eyes of eight young travelers who decided to test the hypothesis are presented with the most perfect paradise: an impeccable beach, an open-air bar with an excellent assortment and the same staff, joints in a circle and an incendiary rumba until the morning. And as a bonus, there’s also a tour of incredible underwater caves. In the morning, however, it turns out that everything has to be paid for - tourists hardly come to their senses and discover that there is no trace of yesterday's friends, and they themselves have been robbed to the bone. This is followed by a serious conflict with the aborigines in the nearest half-dead town, where the police have never been heard of, all the delights of trekking through the jungle barefoot, and finally a house plunged into darkness, where whole stacks of foreign passports gather dust in the drawers of the table, the fate of the owners of which is not worth thinking about. . And outside the rotor of a helicopter is already rumbling, from which very unpleasant-looking men are unloading surgical instruments and mini-fridges for transporting donor organs.

Even not the most attentive viewer begins to understand after about twenty minutes that he has already seen something similar quite recently. And it’s true: the plot of “Turistas” is suspiciously reminiscent of the recent “Hostel” by Eli Roth, which is unlikely to be able to immediately escape from one’s head. Not only the general idea is the same, but also some scenes down to the smallest detail, and even the most insignificant details: for example, in both films, for the sake of laughter, the minor characters watch TV, where an American film dubbed into the local language breaks through the interference (in “Hostel” this was translated into Slovakian by Jules' monologue from Pulp Fiction, in Turistas - the Nazis babbling in Spanish from the old war series Hogan's Heroes). Italian classics of “native horror” of the early 80s like “Cannibal Hell”, “Cut and Run” or “Let Them Die Slowly” are also rethought very closely to the text. And from other films, well-known or not, a lot of things were stolen, although “Hostel”, of course, was luckier than others. But, on the other hand, in Roth’s film, no matter how much he wanted, it was impossible to have a special underwater director of photography involved, and in Stockwell his name is included in the opening credits. And for good reason: towards the end, the movie somewhat unexpectedly goes beyond the traditional horror film in the style of “tourists in distress” (the canons of which were set by “The Texas Massacre”, and recently continued in various ways by the Australian “Wolf Pit”, the British “The Descent” , and the same “Hostel”) and turns into an area that director Stockwell knows much better. His two most sensational films of late - "Blue Wave" and "Welcome to Paradise" - were most directly related to the water element. Therefore, the final confrontation of the few “touristas” who miraculously survived with their tormentors takes place in the very underwater caves that the deceptively friendly local resident took the future donors to admire. And in terms of the intensity of passions, the underwater battles are not only not inferior to similar scenes from Peter Yates’ “The Abyss,” but sometimes make one recall the battle in the underwater saloon from the immortal comedy of the Zucker brothers “Top Secret.”

“Turistas” did not arouse much enthusiasm at the box office. If the notorious “Hostel”, with a meager budget, at one time saddled the first place in the American box office and eventually collected quite decent money, then Stockwell’s creation in the first week settled only in the eighth position of the top ten. And on the Internet, the film was greeted rather sourly: there wasn’t enough horror, and not enough blood. Although, if you put your hand on the heart that has not yet been removed from the body, in fact everything is going quite well. And the fingers from the blow of the machete fly off in different directions quite well, and one of the heroines quite convincingly breaks her neck when falling from a cliff, and the actual removal of organs is presented in such a way that you won’t want to, but you will grunt. But whether satisfied or indignant - here everyone decides for himself.

Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY