User Reviews

"Matlatl" tells the story of a Salvadoran family that suffers a tragic event and is forced to move to a recondite place in the north of El Salvador. There, strange things happen related to the Salvadoran mythological legends. This film has a big problem with the script: the story is not clear, and in many parts nonsense, and there are obvious problems with dialogues and the actors. There are also situations and characters that are so unnecessary and just bad.

The performances, being honest, almost all are bad, but I think the worst is Augusto Morales performance as Juan. In two takes this was obvious, because he could not act in front of the camera, the first was when the family is eating and the father talks to Juan, in the whole scene you only see the father talking and you not even see the reaction of Juan in a serious conversation; the other comes in another conversation with his father, in this one the face of Juan can't be seen but because the scene is dark. Not to mention when Juan kills his "girlfriend". Then, the priest, an unnecessary character that doesn't make any difference, this was one of the "cliches" of the movie because... really? a priest? In that case you should take your son and go to a hospital first. To the little girl, we can't demand her a wonderful performance but it was good (better than Juan's).

Now some technical aspects, the cinematography was weird, sometimes was good and sometimes was horrible, sometimes you see like the time was daytime and then in the same scene it seems like it was night; and you could clearly see the filters used in the photography, just bad. The sound was the same, sometimes disappeared from the movie and then appeared. Another terrible thing, maybe the worst, was the fire flames, I was laughing out loud every time that appeared, and there was another of that bad effects. The only good thing was the make-up of "La Mujer".

This movie was made by a new film production company. It's their first movie and I don't know if it is the result they wanted, I doubt it, and at least they tried it and from now on they can only do it better but, even though, this movie is very bad.

Today's horror film genre has become an exploitation of certain resources that continue to function due to the conformism of the audience. But perhaps it is currently the best genre to reach the masses especially in a country that doesn't produce films, as in my country El Salvador. But in this case this is not the way to say that the country can make movies because in my opinion Matlatl, a horror film made in El Salvador, has very serious problems. To start the film never has a plot, is empty, The only real thing about the movie is the first few minutes, where the problem is shown, so the family has to go, but from there the movie is lost and the characters do not help to build it, because they never present clear and transcendental motivations. We never see their lives beyond the horror film, they are only in the movie to go to the place where everything bad will happen. It is certainly a problem of script. The performances do not help as we never see demanding situations dramatically and the actors do a bad job. The story does not rely on its characters. And the characters made for terror feel out of place and forced. For example, the character of the priest, only comes to add more elements of terror, but is totally unnecessary and absurd. Also with the other characters that do not contribute to the plot and feel empty. Then there are mistakes in photography. In horror films cinematography is a very important because it is an element that adds to the atmosphere generated by the film. The photography in Matlatl is not bad but it does not help in the plot, doesn't evolve. In addition there are some visible errors in certain scenes, errors of continuity, and scenes in which we perceive a very rare and inconsistent photograph with the scene. This can be seen in the first sequence made in black and white and then suddenly we change color. All this results in a predictable ending, nothing shocking, with characters coming out of nowhere concluding a film with many flaws.