Our doomed hero this time is a photographer named Santiago (Harold Torres), an insensitive man who’s all the time on the lookout for the very best shot, regardless of what number of ethical boundaries he has to cross to get it. He’s not precisely loathsome, however he skirts strains of proper and flawed, and one will get the sense that his struggles in his life and profession are doubtless his personal fault, even when he cannot see that. When he finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant, he handles it in a method that isn’t precisely compassionate. It might most likely mess together with his profession. Earlier than the movie even will get to its story of sensory numbness, she tells Santiago, “I see the precise reverse of what you see.” It seems like his notion has all the time been just a little skewed. That is about to turn into his actuality.
His pursuit of the subsequent grisly photograph to promote to magazines leads him into a house the place a physique appears to be like to have been eaten by rats. Lit by flashlight from an officer, he takes a photograph and slaps a ugly headline on it (“Say Cheese!) After that very creepy encounter, unexplainable issues begin taking place to Santiago. It seems that he’s been cursed, and this manifests itself by the lack of his senses … one after the other. Whereas conveying lack of scent or style isn’t precisely cinematic, Henaine and his staff have a blast with the final act, when, let’s simply say, issues get even weirder and the sound design will get award worthy. They’re ready to make use of the ability of movie—it’s sight and sound, in spite of everything—to place us proper in Santiago’s diminishing bodily and psychological state.
The cinematography by Glauco Bermudez is powerful from the start, establishing a pointy visible language for the movie that’s then dismantled as Santiago’s life unravels. As he realizes he’s about to reside as much as the title of the movie, Santiago’s panic rises, resulting in increasingly more questionable decisions. The script goes to some pointless locations within the last act that attempt to clarify what’s taking place to Santiago a bit, however that is probably not important to this story. If something, there is a superior model of this movie that is much more surreal and daring in its narrative decisions.
The explanation the movie works in addition to it does is due to how utterly Henaine and his staff immerse us in Santiago’s journey. I feel the superb Torres is in each scene—if not, it’s shut—and that locked POV is a fully sensible selection that amplifies the strain of this journey. Like these Carpenter and Craven tales, this can be a story of a person who’s taking a deserved journey to Hell, and we’re going with him.