Quick Movie Review: KM31

3/10

It's a Mexican ghost story, heavily influenced by lank haired J-Horrors like "Ringu" and "The Eye". It wears it's influences on its sleeve and this just serves as a constant reminder that it just isn't anywhere near as accomplished as those it tries to emulate.

A woman thinks she's hit a kid on a dark road at night, turns out he's a very creepy ghost, and has lured her into the middle of the road to be hit by a truck and slips into a coma. Her twin then begins to investigate the road where the accident took place in an attempt to solve the puzzle of the strange visions she begins having soon after her sister is hit.

Influence is a tough beast to conquer, do it well and you have a homage or a "nod", do it badly and you're just ripping off - we have the creepy lank haired thingy from "Ringu", the ghost from "Devils Backbone", the Scary woman in the bathtub out of "The Shining" and several other less intersting references (the old shadow behind a curtain and when you pull it back nothing is there gag is used a couple of times). The other thing that hampers this movie is that the "heroine" is not very good at acting - her terror is pretty much as convincing as Jessica Alba's (in the trailer for the Eye remake - I am avoiding seeing the full movie in that version).

When you are making a formulaic horror movie, there are many pitfalls you can fall in and as well as making the "homage as rip off" mistake the film just manages to fail to be interesting - there isn't a single twist that isn't hackneyed and telegraphed (ooo.. turns out it was a ghost, and you thought it was a person... ooo!), a single attempt to fill any plot holes and by the (admittedly, admirably bleak) end I was ready to ask all the ghosts to sod off and go haunt the writer and director.

A formula horror movie doesn't have to be this derivative. For example, "The Eye" in its original form is basically a "Ringu" rip-off, but it is so well put together, and the scares are so disturbing, that it transends its obvious influences in precisely the way KM31 does not.

Not one to recommend.

A