Viagem do Medo

My mother-in-law highly recommended this film so the other night my old lady and I unfortunately decided to watch it.

This is a movie that is a paint by numbers type of thing. After the first ten minutes this seemed headed to Touristas-land. Overall it is like Touristas but without the organ harvesting (for Touristas with organ harvesting but on a train, please watch The Train).

The first ridiculous thing is that you have these two beautiful chicks that are on a bicycle tour through South America. These chicks aren't even on full laden touring bikes with panniers. Just mountain bikes with a small trunk bag that carries all their hot clubbing clothes and high heels. Second, these chicks are so skinny. It looks like they couldn't ride more than 5 miles with their toothpick legs and flip-flop shoes. Totally unconvincing as bicycle tourists.

Next, they decide to get all tarted and liquored up and tease the deranged locals at some bar and maybe get in some action with a few men even though they know that the only bus out of town is leaving at 8am. Of course they act severely disrespectful and stupid almost provoking a kidnapping, beat down and Amtrak.

I have to say that the movie is watchable because the scenery is nice and the locations and buildings are interesting and the chicks have pretty faces, but the whole time you're just screaming how stupid can these chicks be. Bicycling around in hot-pants and a sports-bra in some Argentinian red-neck holler with the degenerates leering and rubbing there mitts together in anticipation for tonight's party favor...

I should probably see the original but didn't even know about it until I came here to spew my review for the lame remake.

Bottom line: Don't waste your time on this one. It is flat-out predictable, stupid, and lame. Even The Train is better than this one.

The only good thing about this movie is the editing, the camera work and the sound. The acting is okay, but the plot is shallow. The promise of twists is totally unfulfilled. It is predictable and rather pointless. What a shame. It is one of those movies that seems to have something, but you wait and watch and nothing happens. There is very little to say about the movie. I had to add this filler just so that the review could be accepted for having 10 lines of text. The characterisation is shallow. I suppose the scenery in some of the scenes is rather interesting. But other than that, this is a complete waste of your time.

And Soon the Darkness is a serviceable "vacation gone bad" thriller. The two lead actresses are VERY pleasant to look at. They bike and sunbathe and run very prettily. But the story is so predictable that it's almost comical, the bad guys and plot twists are apparent from the very beginning, and the protagonists make decisions so stupid that they almost seem to ask for the situation that they get involved in.

You should be very familiar with this kind of plot by now. A pair of attractive young American tourists (Odette Yustman and Amber Heard) get separated from their bike tour group in Argentina, meet some suspicious people, get separated from each other, and then one of them goes missing. They're not the smartest of tourists, that's for sure. 

Even if you can stand the by-the-numbers plot (for Odette Yustman, I can accept a LOT of clichés and obvious plot twists), And Soon the Darkness isn't a very thrilling thriller. There's not a lot of creativity or imagination to it, it's just the same movie we've seen before with some new faces. Watch it if you're a fan of Yustman or Heard, but don't expect a lot.

"And Soon the Darkness" tells the story of two American girls on bicycle trip in Argentina who fall prey to a sinister captor.One of them suddenly vanishes and the other one must find her friend before it's too late.I am a big fan of extremely chilling Robert Fuest's original set in sunny France and this unneeded remake is nowhere nearly as suspenseful.In fact it's very dull with one-dimensional characters and the lack of surprises.The banality of the plot is simply overwhelming.Admittedly the scenic scenery of Argentinian countryside looks beautiful and desolate.The ruins of a town that flooded years ago and was abandoned provide some spooky atmosphere.Unfortunately the majority of the film is tedious and annoying.5 out of 10.Watch creepy British original instead.

Two young attractive girls are biking through Argentina. They miss their bus to leave and stay a bit longer, when they get into a fight one of them leaves the other by herself. Big mistake, the girl gets herself kidnapped. Now her friend must try to find her.

The film never tries to elevate the genre that it is in, nor make it interesting. And Soon The Darkness manages to follow the footpath of every film before it, thus making it boring and predictable. First we have our two female characters. One is obviously a trouble maker and the rebel, while the other is more conservative. Guess which one gets herself kidnapped and which one has to rise to the occasion to get her friend back? The two female characters are played by Odette Yustman and Amber Heard, they fit their roles of attractive young females. The roles don't call for anything beyond that really.

The biggest letdown, had to be Karl Urban. His character is somewhat pointless. He doesn't advance the plot, his story line is left unfinished and Urban himself seems to be bored with the material. I like the guy, but he needs to pick better projects than this. Now that I have my biggest letdown out of the way, let me tell you where else this film went wrong.

The main reason for the girl getting kidnapped is due to the character's stupidity. The two girls get into a verbal argument, one storms off leaving the other. Who would leave their best friend in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country? On top of that, they state earlier that they were part of a bike tour group, but got lost from the pack? These point in the film had me scratching my head.

The film doesn't really know what it wants to be either, it reminded me a lot of Turistas. These characters are in a beautiful location, the film knows this and it is shot fairly well. There are bits of torture, yet the film never steers into that Hostel, or Saw territory. It comes off as very tame, I'm surprised it is even restricted. The film can easily be a PG-13 flick.

There are no surprises, you know from the moment you see the characters, who is responsible for what. The film tries to be clever to throw a curveball, but as I mentioned before, we have seen this type of film before and it's obvious where it was going. The film even lacks suspense. The kidnapping scene is poorly done, the climax is also a third rate cat and mouse game. The film fails to create any tension and that was a key element missing from here. Too many things were left unanswered for me. The two people who ran the hotel, do they know anything? Are they in on it? Does the wife try to warn them, but the husband put her in her place? Who knows.

And Soon The Darkness peaked my interest, but is failed to excite me. If Karl Urban was not in it, I would never have bothered with it. You should do yourself a favour too and skip it.