Main cast: Maxi Ghione (Comisario Funes), Norberto Gonzalo (Jano), Elvira Onetto (Mora Albreck), Demián Salomón (Walter), Agustín Rittano (Juan Blumetti), George Lewis (Rosentock), Julieta Vallina (Alicia Pérez), and Natalia Señorales (Clara Blumetti)
Director: Demián Rugna

While it is ridiculous to claim that the Koreans invented the whole “creepy tall humanoid monsters in a haunted house” genre, there’s no denying that, after the glut of horror movies in the early 2000s trying to cash in on the successes of Ju-On and what not, it is hard these days to be impressed by movies of that nature. I feel like I’ve seen everything already, and the subsequent glut of haunted house found footage films didn’t help matters.

Hence, I am not sure how much I will enjoy the Argentinian “boogeymen in my house, under my bed and in my closet” film Aterrados, or Terrified in English. Still, it’s not like I have anything else to do, being stuck at home due to the whole COVID-19 infestation in the outside world, so hey, why not.

This movie is about a neighborhood in Beunos Aires that from all appearances seem like every other ordinary suburb. It begins with small odd things, such as weird voices apparently coming from the sink plughole, unexplained thumps and shakes around the house, furniture moving on their own… Then things quickly escalate to violent deaths, a dead boy coming back to life, and worse. Police officer Funes is personally involved because his ex’s son is the one that comes back to life, although “life” may be the wrong word to use here. That thing is certainly an corpse that moves only when you are not looking and the movie needs a jump scare. Three paranormal investigators show up to look into the matter as well. What is happening here?

As to be expected, this movie relies a lot of jump scares, manipulating lighting, and calculated slow-motion camera pans to deliver the scares. It works quite well, though, because there is an intriguing lore behind the spooks. In fact, the whole thing veers into cosmic horror territory, with the spooks coming from another dimension that exists alongside ours, and they can materialize provided you look at them from the right angle at the right place. They are like the tall, naked, hairless monster version of the Hounds of Tindalos, come to think of it.

Also in line with cosmic, the protagonists are helpless to do anything, really, other than to provide exposition and be placeholders for the viewers before they become monster chow.

Meanwhile, the movie wisely avoids showing too much of the monsters, and the undead boy is both cute and repulsive at the same time.

My issue with this movie, though, is that it doesn’t seem to really know whether it wants to be a more visceral kind of horror or a more explosive burn-everything-with-a-kaboom type. It is the former that clumsily tries to be the latter in its late act, and as a result resembles two different movies slapped together awkwardly. Also, the movie spends way too much time on several subplots that don’t really go anywhere (the zombie kid, for example)—when the focus finally returns to the three investigators doing their thing, that part of the movie feels really rushed. The script is intent on introducing new elements to the lore at this late stage when it should be focusing on things that are already there, if you ask me.

Because of this, there isn’t much payoff in this one, and by the time credit rolls, I feel like I’ve been set up just for these people to sell me a sequel.

Nonetheless, there is an interesting premise here. Despite every jump scare and whatever-scare scene here coming off as something that has been done many times before, Aterrados promises to deliver something that may just be a little bit more than the usual jump scare kablam. It’s a shame that many of these promises are undelivered, but still, I’m intrigued enough to likely go check out any sequel that may come out of this.