Bacurau – Streaming on Mubi
Tom Grieve, Cinema EditorBook now
Bacurau
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Co-directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles channel the brutal elegance of John Carpenter’s (Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween) nuts-and-bolts genre offerings with Bacurau – a bloody gonzo siege movie set in rural Brazil. Filho is known for quieter, naturalistic work, such as 2016’s Aquarius, and while the synth-y opening titles of Bacurau hint at what is to come, it seems for a time that his latest film will proceed along similar lines.
The title refers to a dusty fictional town in the remote reaches of north-eastern Brazil. There’s a bar, a live radio DJ, a schoolroom and a museum filled with the armaments of previous unrest. There’s also a corrupt mayor, a water shortage and local militias to be negotiated. Things are further complicated by mysterious strangers visiting on dirt bikes and the appearance of flying saucer-style drones which appear without explanation.
The film erupts into the kind of satisfyingly full bore bloody horror-tinged western teased by its marketing
We know something’s up when Bacurau disappears from Google Maps, mobile signal drops and sudden road closures are implemented. A quiet, serious character-driven movie shifts into demented The Most Dangerous Game territory when it is revealed that a heavily-armed group of white tourists (mostly Americans) — headed by a German leader played by iconic Udo Kier – have camped up nearby.
The film erupts into the kind of satisfyingly full bore bloody horror-tinged western teased by its marketing, as the people of Bacurau are forced to defend their homes. Foreign forces invited to exploit and eradicate the nation’s poorest — the furious, and not-so-subtle, political parallels are clear to anybody with a passing knowledge of Brazil’s current right-wing leadership’s attitude to foreign nations and its own natural resources.
Bacurau available to watch on Mubi with a subscription.
