September 11th, 2015 - Los Inocentes (2013)

aka Bloody April Fools

Los Inocentes is a just okay Spanish slasher that has a few fun moments. But overall, there isn't much tension or anything too interesting about the film... the gore is all right and a few of the kills are a little goofier than you usually get (i.e. a person being attacked by a swarm of bees), but there just isn't enough of an interesting story to hold things together. I mean, a bunch of friends go out to an abandoned hostel - of course most/all of them are going to get killed. I guess the fun is in how you get there or what tweaks there are to the formula. And in that respect, Los Inocentes doesn't have much to offer.

Our group of friends have left the city to have an April Fools Day outing - or at least that's the synopsis on imdb. And the title on Netflix is Bloody April Fools. The problem? April Fool's is not celebrated in Spain - although there is a similar holiday in late December called Dia de los Santos Inocentes, aka Holy Innocents Day. (Which, if the wikipedia page is correct, is a commemoration of a Biblical Event - "the killing of all children under two years [old] born in Bethlehem." Wow... there's a horror movie for you. Not sure how that translates into "pranks," but whatever.) But really, any excuse to have a bunch of kids go out for a night of partying would've done the job. One of the kids is a jokester, but the whole thing doesn't really depend on the holiday. There is a little cognitive dissonance watching a film called Bloody April Fools where the kids clearly talk about it being December, but that's you get for watching foreign films.

(Edit: After reading up on it, it sounds like the murders are actually "deadly pranks." Which in hindsight kind of makes sense. But it's not in your face about it. Plus, I'm not sure how someone getting ran over by a car constitutes a "prank.")

Anyways, we start with a flashback opening scene where some nerdy kid gets trapped and killed in a boiler room in a prank gone awry. And it's just just by the heat - and his face melting against a hot pipe. I didn't know that's how boiler rooms work - apparently you can be killed just by being in one. Seems dangerous. The school/hostel/inn/whatever closed after that tragedy, and many years later our partying friends are lost and need a place to crash for the night. This creepy old building looks like as good a place as any, but what if there was a curse of some sort there? Despite being warned away by someone at a local gas station, they forge ahead, and eventually get picked off one by one by a mysterious killer.

So it's a pretty by the numbers story. The as characters are not anything special - no one is super annoying or really endearing. It's all very middle of the road - no one you hate, but no one you're sad to see die either. I guess there *is* a nerdy guy who really likes Batman jokes, so there's that. There's also a little romantic competition going on - our (I think) hero and the bad boy of the group are both after the same lady, but it's not that interesting and never amounts to much of anything.

The whole thing unfolds somewhat realistically - while the kills are sometimes kind of silly, most of the characters behave normally -  I don't remember thinking "how stupid are you?" or anything like that. The kids are usually isolated and killed, so by the time the remaining handful know there's a threat, they try to leave like any rational person would.

Los Inocentes is a really short film too - the end credits roll at the 64 minute mark. Which is just fine. There isn't a lot of fat on the film, and it never overstays its welcome. And while it maybe could have used a little more character development, I didn't see any potential in the characters anyways. So why waste our time?

The film looks pretty good, and the presentation is a step above what I was expecting. I couldn't find a budget, but it looks polished and a lot slicker than the American Direct to Video slasher I expected when I hit play (I tend to not do any research on these things beforehand). It's nicely shot, and the old abandoned building is appropriately creepy, but big enough that each room has a slightly different feel. The gore is above average (if not too CG'ed), and the killer's calling card (a little paper doll), while not particularly scary, is at least different.

But you never really get a good look at the killer until the very end - so you don't get any cool masks or anything. There is never really a significant sense of tension either. I'm not sure if it's because you never really know where the killer is at, or if you don't care about the kids, but the whole chase/stalk aspect of the film kind of falls flat. The kills themselves are okay, but the action leading up to them is lacking.

So while I didn't really like Los Inocentes, I didn't find a lot to dislike about it either. I think it's a lean enough film (at 64 minutes) that you don't have time to actively have many problems with it. I don't think I would tell you to seek it out, but there are certainly worse ways to spend 64 minutes.

I would   not recommend   this film.