TERRIFIED (Aterrados): A Horror That Knows How to Scare

Horror films constantly remind us that fear is an inseparable part of life, and that dark corners, even if they are located in our own homes, are potential habitats of evil and of creatures that under the cover of night may become a threat to us. Such demons are invoked in the title of the film Terrified.

The Argentine horror may to some extent bring to mind the popular and highly regarded Spanish horror films of the last several years. Apart from the language, Terrified also seems to share with productions from the Iberian Peninsula a suffocating atmosphere tinged with macabre and a suspension somewhere on the border between realism and fantasy. However, this film will rather not go down in the history of the genre as a widely discussed and high-quality work; it will remain a middling effort that, despite its competence, clearly lacks flair.

The film by Demián Rugna takes place in a certain suburb of Buenos Aires, where strange events occur in a kind of Bermuda triangle formed by three houses. In the home of a solitary man strange noises can be heard, after which he disappears without a trace; a woman is disturbed by unsettling voices while cooking dinner; and the drama of the mother of a tragically deceased child deepens with an unexpected visit.

The approach to the genre is already suggested by the opening sequence, in which a small detail signals a disturbance in the normality of the characters’ lives. Very quickly we then move to an escalation of tension and the breaking of suspense through direct macabre. The entire film is based on a sudden rupture of the barriers between the world of dark outgrowths of imagination and real life (this rupture even appears physically in the film).

This classic concept serves as a pretext for a competent and almost textbook cinematic horror story – and this would be an advantage of Terrified were it not for one small detail, namely the fact that it ends at the level of a pretext.

The plot of Terrified consists of three interconnected stories of the inhabitants of the aforementioned houses, whose lives are brutally disrupted by the interference of paranormal forces. The case of the mysterious events is investigated by a trio of specialists – a former policeman, an expert on supernatural phenomena, and her mysterious colleague. They are also accompanied by Funes, a middle-aged policeman who accidentally finds himself at the center of events he would rather not witness. The individual threads and sequences make a good impression – they are efficiently constructed, have appropriate internal dynamics, and maintain tension.

The problem begins when the creators try to weave them together. While the disturbance of the chronology of events and the overlaying of several seemingly separate fragments work well, the development of the story – or rather its absence – proves disappointing. During the film we learn nothing about the nature and character of the aggressive apparitions, nor about the human protagonists of the story. Trying to include several motifs and approaches to the theme of demons within a ninety-minute film, Rugna keeps treading water, offering the viewer nothing beyond a competent exposition that does not lead to any concrete narrative resolution.

The inconsistent structure does not help either. In the first part Terrified adopts a frame-like formula, presenting the individual stories separately and binding them together with the investigation conducted by the trio of specialists, only to later turn toward a standard, linear progression toward the final confrontation between humans and evil forces. Such stylistically overturned narration does not give the impression of a coherent, consistent whole, but rather of an improvisation hastily assembled from general ideas.

As a result, the director seems to forget about the structural significance of the characters, carelessly shifting the weight of the film from one person to another, while the transitions between them are not particularly anchored in the action and, worse still, none of the characters receives a solid characterization that would allow us to see something more in their presence on the screen than mere coincidence, or to become attached to them in any way. The consequence is general chaos and haste, which deprive the entire film of the impression of being anything more than a collection of decent component scenes.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the director knows how to scare the viewer and build tension. Terrified defends itself primarily, if not exclusively, through competently realized sequences of encounters between humans and attackers from beyond this world. Rugna knows how to use the grammar of horror effectively, skillfully combining subtle tension building, classic jump scares, macabre imagery, and an aura of claustrophobic fear of an unnamed threat.

Although at times the quality of the special effects and the animation of monsters emerging from the darkness is jarring, from a technical point of view Terrified maintains a solid level. The problem is not the overuse of genre clichés, which somewhat surprisingly do not stand out very much, rather blending into the film’s dynamics.

The weakness of the picture therefore lies in the fact that no interesting meanings arise from its cinematic syntagm, and the film is weighed down by the lack of a broader concept that would give the story an identity and direction more refined than people are tormented by apparitions from the darkness.

The ending of Terrified suggests that the creation of another installment of this story is a real possibility. One might say that this is good, since the mystery of the events presented has not been explained and the action does not seem to be completed. However, after the screening one may have the impression that the plot has not really begun at all, and that what we have watched is an extended teaser merely announcing the main course.

Yet there is also no reason to despair or especially regret the supposedly wasted potential – it is not so much that something has been squandered here, but rather that there was no proper idea for the film in the first place, which in its final version has become merely a craftsmanlike execution based on only partially conceptualized pretexts.