Unspeakable Horror!

The idea of being a stranger in a strange land is an unnerving cinematic theme that has been put to good use in movies on many an occasion. Unfortunately, Turistas isn’t one of those occasions. Directed by John Stockwell (a former actor himself from Eddie and the Cruisers, Top Gun, and genre fare like Christine), Turistas tells the cautionary tale of backpacking tourists in Brazil thrown together after their kamikaze-piloted tour bus plunges off a hillside. The group is the typical assortment of beautiful bodies, a United Nations of pretty people that includes American siblings Alex (Las Vegas’ Josh Duhamel) and Bea (the O.C.’s Olivia Wilde) and their friend Amy (Beau Garrett from the upcoming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), Australian Pru (Alias’ Melissa George), and British buds Finn (Roswell’s Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown). As most red-blooded college kids do in these films, they forsake sensibly waiting for the next bus in favor of frolicking on the local beach and partying with the seemingly friendly locals at a beachfront watering hole, illogically situated in the middle of nowhere. As usual, the audience knows well in advance of the hapless victims-to-be that these locals are anything but friendly so it’s little shock when the group finds themselves drugged, robbed of all money and possessions, and stranded the next morning on the now deserted beach.

When Kiko, a local with whom they were partying the night before, offers the bedraggled twenty-somethings shelter at his uncle’s jungle retreat, the audience again groans as the group blindly assents with nary a raised eyebrow. The group soon learns that their saviors, led by the nefarious Zamora (played here by Miguel Lunardi as the Brazilian equivalent of Hannibal Lechter or Dr. Butcher, MD) are black market organ harvesters with a grudge against the gringos who have raped their precious homeland of its natural resources, even to the point of reducing its people to sexual playthings to be unceremoniously used and discarded. For the collective misdeeds of the greedy white man, our doomed group of gringos will now go under the twisted scalpel of the equally demented good doctor so that kidneys and livers can be harvested for his poor fellow countrymen in the ultimate act of poetic justice. Deep socio-economic commentary indeed.

Turistas admirably sets out to do for Brazilian tourism what Jaws did for beach vacations and Hostel did for European youth housing; sadly, it fails miserably. The script, which borrows heavily in premise from the latter right down to the excruciatingly unnecessary torture/surgery sequences, is devoid of tension, and what little anxiety one feels watching this movie comes from your own mind as you reflect back on your own what if vacation experiences with local charters and foreign animosity. What strikes as particularly odd when watching this slickly produced and visually appealing film is how little suspense is generated from what appears to be an awful lot of action. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of the movie is action – with running, screaming, swimming in underwater caves in abundance – yet one feels no sense of movement, only inertia. Wooden performances by most of the heavily TV-credited cast don’t help matters, while some exceptionally dark cinematography confuses the action making it difficult to discern which character is doing what at key points in the action.

Queer appeal? Zilch – unless watching an admirably chiseled Josh Duhamel’s swim trucks ride precariously low on his hips is your thing. On the strength of the sculpted abs alone, this one rates 5 out of 10 butcher knives.