There is a lot of good ideas in this movie. Actually you could make at least four really good horror movies based on these ideas. Unfortunately the director decided to add all these ideas in one single package and created total mess.First, there is a legend of abandoned woman who drowned with her child and haunts the place. Good.Second, there is a legend of elderly woman who lived near the haunted place and may haunt also the place. Good.Third, there is a story of two twin sisters that may kinda share their mind and communicate with each other. Good.Then there is a story of two men who have trouble distinguishing these sisters and may or may not love the wrong one.Then there is a story of a cop who somehow tries to resolve the strange accidents happening at Kilometer 31.Then there is a story of people being killed at the Kilometer 31 even though they have been already dead.Then there is a story of a ghost leading to his own body.Then there is some mess about the sisters that might or might not killed their mother for some reason.Then there is some transmigration and some sacrifice and some ghosts wandering around. And also a lot of people getting hysterical while driving and running from their cars in the middle of the street in the middle of the night so they are getting hit by cars of other people also getting hysterical.I kid you not. This movie has more twist that a complete season of South American soap opera and more ghosts that entire The Ring series. The result is very messy and not scary at all because you have no clue what is happening and why so you do not have any "expectations with bad feelings". You just try very hard to get any idea what is going on and what the hell is happening right now.If the authors somehow decided not to "fire all the guns" at the very same time, they had a very decent chance to make really good series similar to The Ring. Unfortunately they made one huge heap of confusing and disorienting mess.What a wasted opportunity!
... View MoreI'd never heard of this film before I saw it and had no preconceptions or expectations. Actually, I was considering going to bed but KM 31 quickly grabbed my attention & I just had to watch it to the conclusion.I actually thought the story was reasonably original for a Ghost Horror movie, so I don't know why people are saying otherwise. I've certainly never seen a movie where the mentally ill mother of twin sisters drowns / OD's, the sisters develop a telepathic connection, one gets run over after seeing a ghost in the road & ends up in a coma, trapped between the world of the living & the dead then the other discovers an old tragedy of a mother & son drowning etc... It was all pretty engaging actually. Admittedly, the style is very similar to that of recent Japanese horror films but that's not a bad thing.I thought the acting was very solid with the exception of the old woman who was quite corny. In fact, Nuno & Omar were very well played. It would be easy for the actors to over act in this sort of film but everything was quite subdued which gave real tension.The Special effects are excellent & a real feature. I actually found myself thinking "Whoa! That was impressive." on a few occasions & that's a very rare thing these days. There are far too many recent films that rely on shaky camera work & bad lighting in an attempt to create the mood & hide iffy effects or ones that have so much CGI they look like a PS3 game. KM 31 gives you gruesome ghosts in gory detail & lets you get a good look at just how nasty they are. Makeup & CGI blend seamlessly & everything looks real. However, tension is retained because we don't get to see them properly until the film is getting near it's conclusion.Dialogue is fairly minimal & there's not a massive amount of character development but I don't think this is too much of a problem. My only real issue was the pace of the movie. Sometimes it drags a bit & there are scenes that could have been cut quite easily. On the other hand, there are parts where the plot moves by too quickly & scenes that ought to have taken 15 minutes are condensed into 5. This makes things confusing at times, especially at the end where there is no explanation why things turn out the way they do. I never quite understood the connection between our protagonists & the ghosts either.KM 31 is well worth checking out & has a really good balance of tension & surprise. I give it a good solid 7.
... View MoreKm 31 is good attempt at reviving and old dormant genre within the Mexican film-making history. We have to credit young writer-director Rigoberto Castañeda for his loose approach at horror film-making. I bet he knew all along big criticism was widely waiting for him at the end of this endeavor, and of course, as a result of it the opinions came out truly divided. Some people said he kind of mixed up all his previous horror-thriller influences cramming them together into this very particular Mexican-styled outfit. I believe --like many any other movies- Km 31 is a portrait of his own creator letting us know what he had seen before, who he was influenced by and also, what we can expect from him in the near future.What I see in Km 3 is an interesting new beginning for Mexican horror movies (Spain also had a strong collaboration) and I perceive Castañeda as a young promise for this almost forgotten genre within Mexican film-making. Of course, like some other horror flicks Km 31 has its lows regarding technical aspects, but we ought to side with Castañeda and understand this movie was made with a very low budget and not much previous experience. The thing here is not about being patriotic and forgiving, only because we are supposedly obliged by a moral concern to support any movie made by the new generation of Mexican directors such as Castañeda. There are many other factors at play to consider, like the surprising incorporation of high-end special effects: We have to admit that particular area of production was truly shy in the recent past of many other local Mexican productions and Km 31 is letting us know the doors are open for better stuff and more interesting flicks.Today Castañeda is not only dealing with simple end-product criticism for his Km 31. He is also dealing with the shadows of some past Mexican horror films, and being a sort of new pioneer for the genre, he unavoidably faces the uncomfortable comparisons with the closet skeletons being pulled out for show. That --of course- is completely unfair.Everyone has the right express his own saying, but the truth is Castañeda is already hooked up in to another production were he is directing but not doing the screenplay and that may change things around for him. Siding up with this team and perhaps a better budget, he might end up following the same luck as Director Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado, Once upon a time in Mexico) who started out low but went higher thanks to the people who believed in him. Good luck to them!
... View MoreI can try to forgive the mistakes of Km 31, but I know I will not forget. Whoever investigates the Mexican cinema just a little, will realize horror genre is not around for, at least, 15 years. This is not an excuse, but let you understand where we are and where are we trying to go. Yes, it is true, Km 31 failed in many aspects. It failed with a captivating closing or with empathic performances, with a rhythm that he never found, with jumping of images packed in good special effects, but surrounded with incomprehensible sequences. But if we are fair, it also had wise moves. It has sowed a seed of confidence and credibility. He has made us remember that our cinema is perfectible and not only condemnable. It reminded us that bogeys not only exist in Tennesse, voodoo in New Orleans or curses in Japan. It reminded us that also here they watch, they threaten and scare. He reminded to us that here also we have fantasy. I am sure that with the correct support, Km 31 can be the beginning of a new history in the cinema of terror. I hope that this way it should be.
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