There are some mild spoilers throughout this review, but nothing that you wouldn't get from watching the first ten minutes of the movie.
Anyone who likes thrillers knows about the "car chase in the desert" sub-genre. These movies are generally set in California, Texas, or Mexico; star an everyman protagonist who usually doesn't get more than minimal characterization; and are, essentially, just road trip movies with a psychopath chasing behind the protagonist. Probably the most famous and best of the lot was The Hitcher, starring Rutger Hauer as the biggest, baddest desert-chasing psychopath of all time.
This is a very interesting movie. Due to the mix of literal and metaphorical elements, the movie is a bit difficult to understand at first. It starts off with a little bit of narration where the male lead, Gene, announces that he's a dead man, aimlessly drifting through Mexico in his pickup. He has no purpose, and he misses his family. If you're like me, you took this as metaphor. But, no: he literally is dead, and this is purgatory. He also tells us that he's been having vivid, disturbing dreams about being a spider, along with accompanying compulsions in his waking life. This is also a gigantic, literal clue that we're supposed to pay attention to. In this afterlife, each person has an animal nature, such as the spider. I think many people were a bit confused by this, as well, and took it as metaphor.
Gene, who speaks no Spanish, eventually comes upon Ana, a woman who speaks no English. They struggle to communicate but eventually give up. Ana is trying to meet up with her boyfriend, but her jealous ex-husband is chasing her. Gene, unable to communicate with her, is oblivious to the danger of her ex-husband. The drifter Gene seems to welcome having an opportunity to help someone who has direction in her life, though the two are tragically unable to truly interact meaningfully with each other. This seems deliberate. Ana's ex-husband seems to communicate only in terms of violence, lashing out angrily at everyone in the movie.
Gene seems to understand that he's in purgatory, but others don't quite seem to get it. Ana, for instance, is confused by the appearance of her dead brother, the strange compulsions that she's been feeling, and why people are behaving so bizarrely. The movie toys with further exposition at one point, when Gene and Ana's brother, Miguel, obliquely discuss what's going on.
Gene: "Have you told her yet?" Miguel: "Told her what?" Gene: "So, you haven't told her." Miguel: "She's introspective. She'll figure it out."
This comes after we see humans murdering each other, vomiting on the corpses, and committing cannibalism. As if all that weren't enough, we see our protagonist, Gene, wrapping people up in rope, like a spider wraps up its future meals in webbing. It's a somewhat disturbing visual, once you get the metaphor. Indeed, later on in the movie, we see him snacking on one of his wrapped corpses.
Unfortunately, despite the opening narration ("I'm a dead man in purgatory", "My nature is turning into that of a spider"), some people just couldn't understand what was going on. I was pretty confused, too, until it finally clicked, and I realized that the opening narration was meant to be literal explanation of the plot of the movie rather than some metaphorical clue that had to be interpreted. I think that the opening narration was probably added later on so that people would understand what's going on. Ironically, it ended up confusing some people even more, because they weren't expecting the director to simply and explicitly explain all the symbolism in his movie right in the opening scene. When this is done, it's usually done in the conclusion, not the opening scene. The conclusion itself was a bit subtle -- or, at least, not as overt as the opening scene.
If you enjoy surrealism, thrillers, or road movies, this may appeal to you. The pacing is a little slower than most thrillers, spending more time on atmosphere and tension than on action scenes, but it's never boring or slow. Some of the symbolism (wrapping people up in rope, for example) is very confusing at first. As well, there are some extended scenes shot entirely in Spanish, which might annoy you if you dislike reading subtitles (and don't speak Spanish). However, I liked this movie, and I think it shows a lot of potential. If the director can work on finding a better middle ground between overtly explaining all the symbolism and subtly hinting at metaphor, I think he'll make some even better movies. I couldn't decide between a 6/10 and 7/10, so I decided to be generous and go with a 7/10.
I'm usually pretty good at catching metaphor and symbolism, but even I got a bit frustrated and confused at certain points in this movie, so I can totally understand how someone would dislike it. My advice is to pay special attention to the opening scene, with its important narration. Unfortunately, there's no warning that this information is of critical importance, so it's easy to miss, making the rest of the movie a confusing jumble of surreal images. This is probably the biggest fault in the movie.
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