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Km 31
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| Year: |
2006
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Director: |
Rigoberto Castañeda
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| Stars: |
Iliana Fox, Adrià Collado, Raúl Méndez, Carlos Aragon, Julián Álvarez, Everardo Arzarte, Giselle Audirac, Fernando Becerril, Mónica Bejarano, Izmir Gallardo
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Agata (Iliana Fox) is a young woman who is driving through the night to see her twin sister Catalina (also Fox), but as she passes through a remote part of the highway, suddenly a small figure leaps in front of the vehicle and Agata thinks she's hit something - or someone. Stopping, she gets out and has a look around to see that there is the body of a child lying back down the road a few yards away, and in tears she phones the emergency services; however as she reaches the still form its eyes open to reveal two pits of darkness and Agata stumbles backwards to be struck by another vehicle...
Km 31 was on the signpost where all this occurs, and it happens to the name of the film as well, or Kilómetro 31 if you were Mexican. If you were hoping for a peculiarly Mexican flavour to this ghost story, then you might well have felt let down by what turned out to be a peculiarly Japanese tone, for writer and director Rigoberto Castañeda had patently been viewing his fair share of Grudge and Ring movies from the other side of the Paciific. The plot here might well concern itself with the Central American La Llorona of legend, but it was clear where its heart lay.
Nevertheless, his gambit paid off as this was a sizeable hit in his home country, and did fairly well in other territories as well, but it would be easier to admire if it didn't come across as the kind of thing horror fans had seen altogether too much of in its decade. As if Hollywood remaking the Japanese chillers hadn't been bad enough, here we had filmmakers south of the border doing the same. This means a female phantom is behind the scares, such as they are, tapping into folklore as the crying woman is searching for her dead child, and taking out her frustration on unwary travellers.
One of the most amusing parts is the opening title card which announces this was based on a true story, a claim mirth-inducing in its cheek which presumably is attempting to capitalise on the audience's belief in enduring urban legends of which La Llorona is one, combined here with a standard road-haunting tale. As it plays out, Km 31 isn't going to convince anyone no matter how earnest the dramatics are portrayed, but for a time passer Castañeda conjures up a fair chiller if you haven't seen many of these kind of supernaturally-led movies before.
Poor old Agata spends the rest of the film in bed with her legs amputated, and psychic Catalina is made to suffer for an equal amount of time, with the theme of the ghosts of the past, specifically the way family misdemeanours can return to have an impact on the present, making inroads into the narrative of the heroine. Nothing new there, and Catalina has to face up to the fact that she drowned her schizophrenic mother who predictably shows up in spooky form later on, as well as the other frights that she has to endure. Not that there are many we have to endure, with only another car accident really providing a jolt; it's hard to recommend Km 31 to non-fans, but if you really cannot get enough of this kind of thing, then you'll lap it up. Music by Carles Cases.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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