Desaparecidos

This is an interesting film, it's the first of its kind in Brazil (horror/mockumentary) and it delivers what it sets out to do, which is take the audience on a roller-coaster ride. Its not the scariest movie (it has a audience rating age 14), but it has its doses of panic and pure agony. The film reflects and depicts with accuracy the young hip Brazilian culture and it makes fun of it, as do many horror films.

Its not a Hitchcock movie, and it could not be as it was shot "Blair Witch" style for under $25 thousand and went from concept to screen in less then a year. But it should not be dismissed either as it has earned its place in the Brazilian film history books.

The director and crew should be hailed for taking the risk and making a film without the help of government money (99% of films in Brazil are shot with soft - government money) and for exploring the horror genre, something forgotten by young Brazilian filmmakers.

Audience reactions have been mixed as the film was part of a large transmidia project (also a first for a Brazilian film) that ran for a year on the web prior to the release of the movie. Due to this fact older and more cinematic audiences did not understand the full implication of the film. Younger audiences have approved the film and haild it as the film that will kick start horror films in Brazil. Released theatrically on 12/09/2011.

Well, the plot of the movie isn't a great surprise: a bunch of young people lost in the middle of nowhere. You take this and add the new wave of "lost footage", like Blair With Project did and many others copied after, and you have this movie.

But if you had nothing new on this movie and still had a great movie, an entertaining film, you could not get disappointed. The main problem starts here: it's just more of the same, but with lost of bad actors, bad camera, bad effects, bad make up, terrible sound, dialogs. Everything in this movie is badly done, and if you don't notice it have just 70 minutes, you will think in the end that you were watching this for about 5 hours.

In São Paulo, the friends Alexa (Charlene Chagas), Rodrigo (André Madrini), Kamila (Natalia Vidal), Marco (Pedro Urizzi), Fábia (Fernanda Peviani) e Carla (Adriana Veraldi) receive an invitation to a party in Ilhabela together with a video camera with a necklace. When Rodrigo goes with a girl to the woods to have sex, he panics and gets lost and his friends seek him out. The group vanishes in the woods and their cameras are found later disclosing tragic events.

"Desaparecidos" is an amateurish and annoying home video of bad quality. After the original "The Blair Witch Project", the documentary "style" using a Handycam has become the favorite of people that wants to make a cheap film. The result is terrible and for Brazilian natives, we have to bear also the dreadful accent from São Paulo in addition to the screams and hysterical and histrionic unconvincing acting. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Desaparecidos" ("Missing")

Was not entirely excited by the idea of the story (though with the right execution it may have worked in a moderate guilty pleasure way), with it being nothing new and with the fear nothing new would be brought to it. Coming across 'Desaparecidos' by chance and having an appreciation for horror, despite not expecting an awful lot the decision was made to view it with an open and fair mind.

'Desaparecidos', a Brazilian found footage (have never been a fan because it has nearly always been done badly or worse) horror, turned out to be one of those films that didn't really excite on paper but seen also as part of a low-budget horror quest on top of having appreciation for the genre, and didn't fare much better, in fact it fared even worse, in how it was executed. Do not take any pleasure criticising the film, but it didn't work for me at all in almost every aspect.

Some lighting was not bad and had some atmosphere, but was generally too dark and drab. Especially when it was very difficult to appreciate, let alone enjoy, it properly when the editing especially was so confused and jumpy and the camera work inducing excessive nausea.

Audio is obvious and intrusive and it honestly feels like a woefully inexperienced under-budgeted film in terms of how it is directed.

One of the worst aspects was the acting, which is unspeakably dreadful all round. Have not seen acting this unnatural-looking in a while. The script is horrendously stilted and the characters are not interesting or rootable at all.

Furthermore, there is no tension or suspense whatsoever. The film is far too dully paced and uneventful to be thrilling and is just too silly, jumpy and predictable to evoke any sense of terror. Some of it is not very easy to follow either.

Summing up, nothing good here and everything is awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

If you are new to Brazilian cinema, please do not take this film to be a good example of the country's production.

The writer/director set out to do a "Blair Witch Project"-like movie, incorporating fake social networks profiles and fake news (somewhat alike to what was done for "The Fourth Kind").

The end result was dismal.

The movie fails to create a credible atmosphere from its beginning throughout the end. The actresses are reduced to screaming their way through the film - one of them can be seen frequently giggling. Acting is bad. Very bad. Monotone intonations abound. When overacting is not the case, what you get is expressionless faces. Sound and visual effects are risible at their best, sad elsewhere. The creature is crude. The argument is all but nonexistent. Dialogues actually increase disbelief. There's an excessive and unrealistic use of profanity by the characters, especially before the "plot thickens".

Bottom line: if you sit and watch paint dry, you can at least hope to accomplish something in the way of meditation - no such relief can be found in this movie, even though it is as exciting.