MovieChat Forums > And Soon the Darkness (2017) Discussion > One of the worst films ever made - excep...

One of the worst films ever made - except.....


Yes, as all the reviewers have noted, not one single character in this film deserves our sympathy or our involvement in terms of identifying with them. They behave in the most idiotic fashion at every turn and ask for, and deserve everything bad that happens to them. The plot is nonsense and the dialog infantile.

In short this film sux from start to finish... except... for about 20 minutes in the middle when it turns into a breathtaking visual feast of wonders which must be seen to be believed. How the producers of this silly pointless train wreck of a film film managed to stumble onto this single magical moment of divine inspiration is beyond comprehension.

When one of the stupid girls is abducted, she is taken to a place which can only be described as beyond otherworldly. It is a landscape which all at once conveys an alien world, a post-apocalyptic panorama or the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Surely the producers couldn't have had the budget to build sets of such sweeping magnitude or CGI them into being?

Many reviewers have commented/inquired about this point. That segment of the film was shot on a real location. It is the former resort town of "Villa Epecuen" in Argentina. The short version of the story is that the town was almost instantaneously flooded when the levies of a nearby salt-water lake broke in 1985. It remained submerged for over thirty years until the waters receded. The corrosive salt-water had devastating effect on the hastily abandoned structures, vehicles and belongings of the residents and on the trees and other vegetation.

The full story can be found at: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/12/villa-epecuen-town-that-was-submerged.html

In any case, the truly amazing thing is that it took a bunch of cinematic imbeciles, in the course of making a laughably awful film to discover the amazing wondrous potential for this eerie place as a film shoot location. Why has no other film maker caught on?....

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I know right?

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I actually enjoyed the film despite the incredibly stupid behavior of the characters. However, I totally agree with your comments on the Villa Epecuen scenes. What an amazing place! It should be a famous tourist attraction.

In addition, the scenery around the town - the caves, canyons, etc. - is absolutely spectacular as well. Between these areas, the Andes, Patagonia, and the dazzling glamour of Buenos Aires, I don't know why Argentina doesn't get more tourists from North America.

Unfortunately, anyone planning to see both places from the movie - which would be an awesome trip - better set side aside plenty of travel time. Far from being adjacent, the deserts and mountains of Jujuy and Salta - where the village and hotel were supposed to be located and where those scenes were filmed - are 1,700 km, over 1,000 mi, from Villa Epecuén.

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