Savageland

If you have been on the Internet for a while, you may have seen or come across creepy or out-of-context photos that become disturbing when you learn the context behind them. It's either moments before disaster or the last moments of someone's life. Or how about ¹creepy and disturbing-looking photos that you don't know the context behind but are still horrifying? A single frame of horror forever captured.

Savageland is all about that. Taking place in the Bordertown of Sangre De Cristo, Arizona, which holds over 58 residents, but in one night, all 57 residents are killed, except for one man, a Mexican photographer named Francisco Salazar, who, in the eyes of the white man law, is quickly believed to be responsible for the killings of 57 people (yeah seriously), and he is on death row. Throughout his time in police custody and in court, he remains silent. The public response towards him is no better. Everyone is in a rage and wants his blood. All those innocent people, children including, were killed brutally and savagely in the hands of one monster. However, you know there is something that doesn't make sense about all of this. How could one man kill 57 people with a machete and pitchfork in one night? A single man managed to wipe out an entire town. You don't need to be a detective to know something is wrong.

But then they discovered his camera, which may tell a different story of what happened that night. The photos are a series of black and white photographs of the townspeople going mad and killing each other with extreme motion blur that makes them appear monstrous and deformed creatures from hell. They did a fantastic job with the photographs because they look terrifying, and you wonder what is happening. Some are hard to tell what you are looking at, and that alone is unnerving.

But did any of this happen, or is this a setup? Are the photos real or fake? Is Salazar lying or telling the truth? You will have to watch the movie to find out the answer.

The movie is a mockumentary, which uses fake interviews to give it some authenticity, making it appear that these are real people providing authentic interviews.

You know, after seeing many horror movies that reuse the same genre tropes, but when a movie comes along and does something different with the formula and does it well, its effect will stay with you long after it's over.

I didn't expect nearly as much as I got, particularly with such a low budget, but it delivered. The film actually doesn't spend much time with the man charged in the murder of an entire town, but instead we get to see what he saw that night using a set of blurry, yet unsettling photos depicting the carnage that went on as he made his way through town. There is no shortage of plot holes that can't be so easily filled in with the racism theme the movie is going for, but the creep factor is dialed to 11. You catch on to what is happening fairly early into the movie, but the most interesting thing is the way it makes an old trope feel new. You'll have a much better experience with it if you avoid any and all spoilers.

This was a good mockumentary, I was a little bored during a good portion. I liked the way it was presented, but it could have been a lot more effective if more of the film dealt with a broader scope of events. Something like this would have had much more of an effect on the surrounding areas, if going by the way the film portrays they happened. Still good though. Just a little slow paced.

I guess that's too many genres for one movie, but I think they're all accurate. The story revolves around an apparent spree-killing in a tiny, destitute Arizona border town near Nogales, Mx. The main suspect is also an amatuer photog and though not initially found, when a roll of film that he had taken during the entire night of the killings is developed, the story takes on a much darker tone. I have a soft spot in my heart for low budget horror films, but this one really is pretty high quality. Only one or two of the actors couldn't pull off the doc/reality part (the sherriff being the most annoying of them). There is a bit of a twist at the end, when one of the characters' book is published, and a "cover-up" is potentially revealed, but for the most part this fizzles at the end unfortunately. Over all, it's really well done for the resources they had, and the photo vs video aspect of the found "footage" was unique and really something I hadn't seen before. If you like "The Bay" but weren't really into the heavy-handedness and lack of "fright" you may just like this a lot.

This film started out well and I'll have to say it looks close to a usual documentary. However the story lags and leaves too many unanswered questions to be as good as it could have been. An average film.