June 25th, 1978. It is the day of the World Cup final between Argentina and Holland. It is also a time of military dictatorship, a junta has taken over the country. A death squad is under orders to find a group of dissidents and when they get a proper lead they go round them up and proceed to torture them. What starts out as inhumane interrogation goes to hell as the death squad discovers they have kidnapped a group of people who have aligned themselves with something far more evil than these puppets of the junta.
“We should not play soccer amid the concentration camps and torture chambers” C.O.B.A.
Once again the Onetti Brothers (What The Waters Left Behind and it’s sequel WTWLB: Scars) from Argentina have dipped into their country’s dark and troubled history, this time settling on the year 1978. The country is two years into its Dirty War, a campaign of political repression by a right wing dictatorship. The junta’s leader, Jorge Rafael Videla, went on with hosting the World Cup to draw attention away the occupation. During this campaign death squads would hunt down any political dissidents and detain, torture or disappear them. One of the detention centers was even less than a mile from the stadium where the opening ceremony of the World Cup was held. Madness.
1978 was written and directed by the Onetti Brothers, Nicolas and Luciano, with their regular co-writer Camilo Zaffora on board as well. Luciano once again created the music for this new project. When the film opens we are introduced to one of these death squads, led by the ruthless Moro. Younger squad member, Hugo, has been interrogating captives, opting for a softer approach, hoping it will get the information the squad needs to carry out their assignments before Moro steps in and the torture begins. A bit of policía bueno, policía malo.
Moro has little patience for Hugo’s method so he takes over to interrogation. This is the first real test of the viewer’s mettle. Other members of the gang harass and abuse other prisoners, including Miguel, but this torture scene will be the first test of our courage. The Onetti Brothers are no strangers to extreme horror and violence. While their previous sequel What The Waters Left Behind: Scars surprisingly steered away from showing blood and gore directly, that and the first What The Waters Left Behind film did lean towards the extreme horror side.
Once the gang has the information they need they head out and round up four members of a mysterious group at a warehouse. They find a man and two women praying over another, pregnant woman. Nothing odd going on there, right? Belongings are gathered, some of which will give further clues as to this group’s identity later on. Back at the compound once their identity is found out, chaos erupts around the building and horrific violence begins to happen to Moro, the rest of his gang of military thugs, and anyone else trapped in the building.
There is a good share of gore and violence that happens in the back half of the movie. The special effects by Onetti Brothers regular Yanel Castellano and newcomer to the fold, Melisa Ontivero, are good. This includes a moment when another regular Maria Eugenia Rigon (Abrakadabra, Scars) and her co-star Justina Ceballos neuter a member of the death squad, which is particularly gross. We are glad that after Scars, which we thought was a misstep in horror quality and quantity, that 1978 came back with horror that wasn’t left to the mind’s eye.
However, once things begin to go to Hell, this is when 1978 as a movie begins to lose its focus. But, but… this is what we wanted, right? We wanted Moro and the rest of the death gang to die horrible violent deaths, right? Ye-eeeeeeeeeees, but ...
It felt like the satisfaction of watching the death squad get theirs is over too soon. The story focuses a lot on Carlos Portaluppi in the role of Carancho, a particularly nasty piece of work. His death is easily one of the most satisfying ones. After we’ve spent that much time getting to know some of the nasiter ones better, the rest just become quick fodder. Too quick if you ask us.
The violence and horror quickly become long shots of this bundle of contorting, snarling bodies, which begins to feel like they’re just filling space here, running out the clock if you will. Some of those key violent moments -death of a death squad - are also masked by a snarling mob of justice. This could simply be a cost of production as well, not enough means available so the Onettis could give more big pay off moments.
There is some irony here. In the movie the death gang is following this important match; the radio plays in nearly every room and clips are spliced in from time to time. Everyone is cheering for Argentina. Well, the death gang are anyways. As you would any big game you choose a side to cheer for. We don’t really have someone to root for in this movie. Every time you think you have someone to anchor your hopes on they get wiped out. You won’t root for the death gang (Or will you? <points finger randomly and accusingly>) and and we can confidently say you won’t be cheering for the new ones they haul into the building later on. You quickly surmise they’re something… different.
You could cheer for the prisoners already in captivity, the ones being tortured and ridiculed. You could also cheer for Hugo, the only member of the death gang that seems to have semblance of a conscious. Because there is a perceived imbalance of attention in their favor, time which would allow us to latch onto them, perhaps we’re not as attached to them in the end as the filmmakers and writers have hoped.
That might leave the viewer no safety net in this movie. There is no one to side with because we’ve not been given enough to develop an attachment, either by minimum time spent with them before everything went tits up, or, they’re not around long enough - refer to recent comment about horrific violence - for the viewer to get attached. It is as if the lads were hoping that just being prisoners of a death squad is enough for us to form that bond with prisoners like Miguel and the others.
We welcome nutso and gonzo twists and 1978 is for sure one of those ‘Well, that escalated quickly” types of horror movies. Any maybe some viewers won’t need a safety net, someone to root for, someone you wish to escape their bindings and the horrors of the death squad, and then some. This is just our thoughts, that when you go this hard you need to give your viewers something to hope for, continuously, from the start, as a form of relief from it all.
1978’s survivor has a beginning and an end, but no middle as the film wanders off to gather more lambs for the slaughter. It makes for a whole lot of chaotic horror, snarling and gnashing of teeth, sure, but at what cost?