Andariel Halo
This film starts and plays out like a typical true crime documentary and is paced as one, starting by placing us directly into the post-crime situation; a man named Francisco Salazar is accused of wiping out an entire tiny town Sangre de Cristo of 57 people overnight on the Mexican border.The cast of characters being interviewed include some usual types, including experts, friends/family members, relatives of victims, the racist white sheriff, the racist radio host, and random loudmouth idiots on the street with racist opinions. In my opinion, this framing device is played up a bit much, to the degree that it strains a bit of credulity in the face of the photographs.
The build-up we get for Salazar is incoherent, with brief snippets talking about Mexican gangs and cartels, "La Raza", and how supposedly Salazar perfectly fits the archetype of a serial killer. This would all be fine if not for the fact that it's either not at all hinted at later on, or else directly contradicted by the later on interview.Pure racism is the driving force behind the crusade against him, driven on mercilessly by the sleazy racist sheriff and the incessantly annoying racist radio host like a southwestern rush Limbaugh, who plays up the ultra-conservative hateful bigot to a degree that may be painfully realistic, but severely detracts from the narrative at times.
we're shown Salazar being convicted after being assigned an inept public defender only on his third case, and at a second trial we're introduced to a crucial aspect of the story that changes everything; a camera.
Suddenly we're introduced to the "real" Francisco Salazar; someone in no way related to "La Raza" or any Mexican gang or cartel. Someone who is a photographer who did odd jobs in Sangre de Cristo and was friends with the local priest and his family. We also get ahold of footage of an interview conducted with him, in which the story of what actually happened unfolds.
Via interviews with relatives of the dead, the racist white sheriff, the experts, and snippets from the interview with Salazar himself, as well as maps, we then go over Salazar's journey through Sangre de Cristo, where it becomes almost certain to us that a zombie outbreak has occurred. We get no unrealistic glimpses of the events aside from black and white still images taken by Salazar at the time it happened. I don't know how the camera worked or why the images came out oddly at times, with lots of unusual blurs, but it only served to further enhance the creepiness and unsettling nature, as many of the figures in the photograph don't look blatantly like the stereotypical zombie, but nevertheless just look wrong, sometimes horribly so.
The journey Salazar takes goes from him walking south, out of town, to him ending up running up in a roughly straight line north through town, photographing all along the way. The photographs are flawless in evoking horror and creepiness without being over the top or too expository. The zombie motif is evident in Salazar's descriptions, while the photographs seem to start adding to them, making for some scenes of "zombies" behaving smarter than the usual zombie, or with faces that are absolutely demonic.
the photographs are so magnificent that they carry the entire movie.
The only problem I have, which seems relatively major, is that the topic of the photographs is brought up during the second trial, but is inexplicably ruled inadmissible in court. No explanation is given why, and the inept public defender doesn't even bother fighting it.The racist white sheriff uses the "they're photoshopped" excuse, but the insane level of detail in many of the photographs makes them undeniably real. Even if the "zombies" could arguably be considered photoshopped, the photographs very clearly show that it is not Francisco Salazar who is attacking and killing the subjects, but a large group of other people attacking and killing them.
The word "zombie" is never spoken or mentioned in any way, nor is the subject of zombies broached by any of the experts or defenders of Salazar. Even the psychological expert guy tries to imply at the end that the town massacre was another in a long line of historical riots and assaults on communities of color likely orchestrated by white supremacist types.
ultimately, this is a rather unique take on the Zombie genre, and the gorgeously haunting photographs do much to elevate this film.
Hajimoto0625
This movie does a great job of imitating real documentaries, especially the 'true crime' style documentaries. It had the footage from the police station, the crime scene diagrams, coronor's reports, interviews with families of the victims, skeptics, lawyers, creepy black and white crime photos...the whole enchilada (pun intended). But it had no payoff or excitement. It was kinda boring. The thing that makes the true crime documentaries interesting and creepy is that they really happened. This story obviously did not. Also, the story could have been told in half the time.I do give it kudos for bringing to light the way our society will treat and easily scapegoat immigrants.
dawndhamilton
I will warn you before I include anything that could spoil the plot for you, so read on without worry:SAVAGELAND is a convincing and effective documentary style horror movie with some fantastic twists, quietly infused political commentary, and a high creep factor. The entire population of a small southern border town is discovered brutally murdered, with the exception of one man: an illegal immigrant with a reputation for being a drifter with the questionable past-time of taking photographs picturing dead animals and a particular young girl. The local authorities and citizens of neighboring towns immediately jump to what might seem an obvious conclusion (depending on your beliefs about undocumented migrants and their tendency to commit violence.) that the man is clearly guilty of this horrific mass murder. But when a roll of film shot that night is discovered it points to events no one seems willing to accept.SAVAGELAND does not fit the standard "horror movie" mold; aside from the many bloody crime scene photos, there is no violence, but that's much of what makes it so great- it's an engrossing, slowly unfolding, undeniably creepy story about the events that may or may not have taken place that night.I am a seasoned horror fan who has grown tired of the same lame plot line they feed us over and over ad nauseum... "A group of teens/college students/friends spend the night in a cabin/an abandoned mental hospital/the woods. They party/have sex/take showers until they're picked off one by one by a ghost/monster/madman." SAVAGELAND gives you a much better story than that, if you can live without the boobs and gore.In closing, I recommend that you DO NOT read the other reviews here, they unintentionally ruined big parts of the story for me, and I wonder how much better it could have been if I had gone in clueless.NOW FOR THE SPOILERS (LOOK AWAY!):Wow! What clever twists in this movie! I love how slowly you begin to question who or what the real killers might be. I also want to give HUGE props to the writers for subtly revealing that the writer- who you assumed had figured out the truth- actually blamed the KKK. Everybody in the movie accused the wrong people: people that they already had a bias against... I can see this actually happening in the US as we are now (sadly) the zombies take out an entire town and we all stand around pointing fingers at each other. WELL DONE!
