Points: 5
Los inocentes (“The Innocents”), the debut feature of Argentine filmmaker Mauricio Brunetti, is set in mid-19th century Buenos Aires province and it’s meant to be both a compelling drama of historical proportions and an eerie ghost tale of revenge. Leaving aside a few specific assets in production values — such as immaculate, tidy art direction, and a neat, rightly moody cinematography — Los inocentes doesn’t even remotely succeed as neither of the two. When it comes to the drama, there’s just no pulse, and for a number of reasons. As far as the horror goes, there’s simply no sense of fear or creepiness. That’s what makes it so tedious to watch.
The story in brief: after some long 15 years, Rodrigo (Ludovico De Santo) returns to the large, sumptuous ranch house where he was born. It is a place where he was endlessly mistreated by his cruel father (Lito Cruz) and neglected by his submissive, religious freak of a mother (Beatriz Spelzini). He’s now married to a young, beautiful woman, Bianca (Sabrina Garciarena), whom he introduces to his parents. His father is as despicable and overbearing as always while his mum is now wheelchair-bound, only able to utter laughable cries and whispers.
Little do they all know that Eloísa (María Nela Sinisterra), a young slave brought from Africa, will return from the land of the dead to avenge the death of so many innocent slaves at the hands of the masters of the house. Worst of all: innocent Bianca is also to pay for the sins of others.
It’s not so much that the storyline is so unoriginal that turns Los inocentes into a cinematic bore (if it were only that, then it’d have been simply predictable), but instead it’s the cartoonish look of all these one-dimensional characters that makes it so hard to buy — with an over-the-top, mean Lito Cruz doing his own impersonation of a mean Lito Cruz. We know some of these landlords were bad guys, we know we are not to empathize with them, we know that slaves were treated like garbage. But you don’t have to stress it so much, it’s not necessary to paint a picture with such broad strokes. For the sake of seriously good drama, what you need is developed characters and not trite stereotypes. And the same goes for disturbing horror cinema.
Then you have the lame dialogue: explanatory to the tiniest detail, often solemn and almost never realistic, the lines uttered here fail to carry any genuine dramatic weight. So you don’t buy the characters and you don’t buy how they talk. Add to that the lack of the necessary tension to pull the story forward. Major and minor events take place one after another in an automatic, repetitive manner, with no unforeseen twists and turns of any kind. Following generic conventions is one thing; doing so without having a soul is something entirely different. So sooner rather than later, and despite the formal achievements in cinematography and art direction that give the film a credible overall look, the creepy and disturbing atmosphere a film like this one calls for is never conjured up. The living dead may return and indeed they do, but they are neither disturbing nor scary. They just have great make-up, perform a few tricks they know by heart, and go back to rest in peace. By then, you are probably sound asleep too.
Production notes
Los inocentes (Argentina, 2016). Written by Mauricio Brunetti, Natacha Caravia. Directed by Mauricio Brunetti. With Lito Cruz, María Nela Sinisterra, Beatriz Spelzini, Sabrina Garciarena, Ludovico Di Santo, María Eugenia Arboleda, Stella Delphino. Cinematography: Hugo Colace. Editing: Elena Ruiz. Running time: 101 minutes.
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