Cinema Crazed

Buy This Film

2006

Rated: R for nudity, strong sexual content, torture, and graphic violence.

Genre: Thriller Adventure

Directed By: John Stockwell

Running Time: 1:29

Review by: Felix Vasquez Jr.

Review Date: 2/05/07

Special Features:
N/A.

TURISTAS

Ah Xenophobia, and its aggressive devices pushed upon us by the studios. You just have to love it. Everywhere but America, you’re liable to be tortured, maimed, raped, dissected, robbed, and literally destroyed. None of that happens here. None of that happens here. Right? Sure, “Turistas” is just another shitty quasi-horror film about innocent Americans, and murderous foreigners, but there’s the bigger issue. Film has a power, and it has a power to commit many deeds. It can convince us that the Jews were bad, the Nazi’s were heroic, the Vietnamese were monsters, the US were heroic, and that, shit, foreigners are evil. And whether we realize it or not, many of us can be convinced of this because movies said so.

People who don’t examine the material are likely to buy into the corn fed shit stuffed down our throats as “entertainment,” and then we have a country of ignorant, racist, numbskulls who prefer to stay in the US of A, because look what happens in the movies. Those dirty foreign bastards. “Turistas” continues the misconceptions, and through a really bad result of monkeys on typewriters, feeds us a thriller that’s touted as a pure horror movie. The murderous country for this film is Brazil!

Three good looking tourists, and a casual traveler are wrecked on an island after a bad bus ride, lose all their papers after a “dreamy” night of partying with travelers, and shit hits the fan. And get this, are you ready? Their cell phones do not work! How original is that, eh? And then, we’re brought along for some of the stupidest people to ever grace a movie screen. They’re in imminent danger, yet they kiss, they have sex, and they fool around, while being led by a token kindly Brazilian.

“Turistas” is not horror. It’s essentially a thriller that we may have seen on Cinemax or at your local video store, had Fox Atomic not been involved. It’s nothing short of terrible, and that’s because almost everything about it signals lack of creativity. Characters are bland and interchangeable, situations lack any sense of tension, and the plot is stock, without any sense of individuality. It’s artificial junk fed by a studio seeking a quick buck.

Stockwell's beautiful direction and keen eye for visuals can not save what is basically a forgettable, and bland piece of quasi-horror semi-adventure. "Turistas" is not the awful waste of celluloid I've heard it was, but it sure is junk.

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