Mexican writer/director Joaquin del Paso’s sophomore feature, if not without sophomoric tendencies, is one disturbingly creepy socio-politico allegory hiding behind a How I Spent My Summer Vacation/Lord of the Flies schema.* A busload of ‘tweens’ & teens seem happy enough when welcomed by camp staff & senior advisors, but there’s an uncomfortable edge to all the unsupervised boys-will-be-boys roughhousing. And as layers of deceit flake off, we can see a design revealed under the surface tension and religious comradery as ideas of power and the rights of class entitlement pentimento into view as codes of behavior. Gang up on the weakest; isolate the dark-skinned scholarship boy (and beat him up for sport); see how easy it is to pressure a false confession out of a scared innocent kid; dole out cheap gifts to the grateful local poor; use peer and social pressure to psychologically brutalize. Lessons given with the tacit approval of the boys’ absent parents. Some scenes come on too strong; others seem weirdly off point, but del Paso gets a lot right, works strongly with his cast (kids and adults) while pulling off a couple of devious ‘red herrings’ starting up/then bypassing expected homo-erotic/gay panic/dickish behavior, and letting us see how false threats on the compound are part of the show, meant to highlight class-oriented fear. At its frequent best, this thinking man’s horror show can get inside your head. (Note: Another 'Family Friendly' labeled film that's definitely not for the kiddies! But kids old enough to be cast in it, like those 12 - 14 yr-old campers might get the most out of the film.)
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Wildly influential, much honored/much adapted, William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES never lives up to its high-flying rep in print or on the screen. Instead, though not strictly comparable, try Guillermo del Toro’s early masterpiece THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE/’01 which feels like a major influence on del Paso. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/el-espinazo-del-diablo-devils-backbone.html
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