Turistas

Yeah I Want See

Turistas is a clear cut Hostel wannabe. The similarities are obvious, with a group of backpacking tourists having the time of their lives, only to have their vacation cut short after taking advice from outsiders, and find themselves in compromising situations which threaten their lives. It's a race against their aggressors as they try and escape... doesn't it all sound so familiar?

The slasher genre cannot be more overcrowded than now. With franchises such as Saw and movies like Hills Have Eyes, Hostel, Wolf Creek and son on, we brace ourselves for more, with the sequels of the previous two mentioned movies coming out soon. I guess such movies, filled with sex and violence, will continue to be made until the box office start to show signs of severe dents and become unprofitable, and hey, I'm not complaining, until now.

While you have to tip your hat off at the attempt at tying in urban legends (which could be true) about missing personnel and the sweeping statements made at organ donation, the execution (pardon the pun) of this movie, is nothing short of basic formula - sex and nudity at the beginning (though nothing much to see), followed by plenty of blood, gore and violence to end it all. In fact, the build up takes so long, you wonder if they had forgotten all about the need to put the characters under some form of duress and emergency, remembering to do so only in the last 30 minutes of the film.

Even then, this movie is a walk in the park compared to its more gruesome counterparts. Boasting only one major gory scene which will be likely to make your stomach churn, everything else is a long stroll to making things happen. In fact, having a director of underwater photography credited in the opening, is warning enough - there is a severe overindulgence of underwater scenes, which is neither interesting or exciting, and dragged on for too long. With its inadequate lighting and repetitive actions of surfacing for water, this is perhaps candidate for worst non-action-sequence-ever.

If you must scratch your itch in watching a gory movie, then hang on to those precious dollars until The Hills Have Eyes Again. Unless you're a fan of the Las Vegas television series, then you might want to check out one of the rare big screen outings of Josh Duhamel (who plays Danny in the series). Otherwise, wait until Michael Bay's Transformers hit the big screen, he's in that one too.