Revisited: Terrified – review

Director: Demián Rugna

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

This Argentinean film was looked at by me a couple of years ago as a Vamp or Not? under its Spanish title Aterrados. Be warned that the link to the previous article will lead to full spoilers as I explore whether the film has a vampire element – suffice it to say, for this review, that there very much is both vampiric beings and the restless dead involved. However, with the UK Blu-Ray release upon us I thought it was a good time to revisit the film as a review (just to note that the stills are from the previous review and not illustrative of the Blu-Ray’s print).

the restless child

This is part a psychic investigation film, which then throws several elements into the fray with a sort of haunting element, a restless dead element (with a child corpse that just will not stay in his grave), interdimensional entities and a dose of body horror element at the end of the film. The latter was really interesting and we were beginning to verge on Clive Barker territory (as I mention in the previous article). Perhaps the shame is that such a direction wasn’t exploited but I suspect that was as much budgetary restraints as anything, with the film offering a few moments of body horror but sparing with that use.

Elvira Onetto as Albreck

The film has a genuinely creepy edge, although because it is an investigation (to a degree, the paranormal investigators are fairly certain in and of themselves as to what they’ll find) that a second watch isn’t as captivating as the first but it is still worthwhile. The film is relatively short (at 85 minutes) and there was certainly scope for the film to have been longer and not outstay its welcome. The acting is competent throughout, but the characters could have been fleshed out much more – two of the three paranormal investigators are absolutely paper-thin – however, even without well drawn characters for the most part, the atmosphere is maintained well.

brutal opening

Less exciting was the actual Blu-Ray package. The film is there in a nice print, both in original Spanish and English dub. The English subtitles are SDH – whilst I applaud and support including SDH subs to make the film more accessible for the Deaf and hard of hearing, it should not be beyond wit and wisdom to also include standard subtitles for those who don’t need to be told when (for example) ominous music comes on – load both types onto the disc. There are absolutely no other extras and this is a shame as this is a film that is begging for a director’s commentary to explore his thinking.

Nevertheless, the film is the main event and this is still a very worthwhile horror film and one that certainly falls in the vampire realm – just not your standard Hollywood undead. 7 out of 10 is for the film.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK