While on vacation in Brazil, six young travelers wind up stranded in the middle of nowhere when their bus crashes. After a night of partying on a secluded beach, they wake up in the sand, having been drugged and robbed, leading to an even darker secret about the isolated Brazilian community and their use of tourists.
Turistas offers plenty of gorgeous eye candy although not much in terms of suspense or entertainment. The main reason for the film's weak quality is due to its sluggish pacing. The first hour just stumbles along so slowly featuring characters that are so unlikable that the viewer doesn't care whether or not they survive. Unless your idea of fun is watching people partying on a beach and behaving like morons then you are in for a real treat. When the annoying tourists are finally drugged and robbed, nothing happens to them right away. For whatever reason, the bad guys use this man called Kiko to lead them through the jungle to his uncle's house so that the tourists can think they are going to receive help and be safe. When they finally arrive, the real terror begins although the film doesn't actually get a whole lot better.
First of all, I don't understand why the bad guys waited that long to use them. Why couldn't they just kidnap them after they drugged them? Why did they waste an entire day? The twist of what they do to tourists in Brazil is pretty scary but only one character is actually killed in this manner. The rest die in different ways and once the person is dead, they are useless to the Brazilians because they can't use their body parts anymore. Anyways, the last twenty minutes were fast paced but a bit repetitive because they stayed underwater for most of it.
Director John Stockwell is horrible at storytelling but he does have a nice eye for scenery which was the only true redeemable aspect of the film. They took full advantage of being in Brazil and managed to get many nice shots as well as some neat underwater scenes. While they were pretty attractive, these scenes really had nothing to do with the story so they were a bit gratuitous. The acting was pretty awful with everyone giving below average performances. Josh Duhamel was very wooden and Melissa George was just very bland. Desmond Askew gave by far the most annoying performance out of everyone while Miguel Lunardi gave the best performance although that's not much of an achievement. Overall, 2006 saw the release of many horror films and while Turistas offered something a little different than the usual, it wasn't able to function as an effective horror film. Rating 4/10
Turistas offers plenty of gorgeous eye candy although not much in terms of suspense or entertainment. The main reason for the film's weak quality is due to its sluggish pacing. The first hour just stumbles along so slowly featuring characters that are so unlikable that the viewer doesn't care whether or not they survive. Unless your idea of fun is watching people partying on a beach and behaving like morons then you are in for a real treat. When the annoying tourists are finally drugged and robbed, nothing happens to them right away. For whatever reason, the bad guys use this man called Kiko to lead them through the jungle to his uncle's house so that the tourists can think they are going to receive help and be safe. When they finally arrive, the real terror begins although the film doesn't actually get a whole lot better.
First of all, I don't understand why the bad guys waited that long to use them. Why couldn't they just kidnap them after they drugged them? Why did they waste an entire day? The twist of what they do to tourists in Brazil is pretty scary but only one character is actually killed in this manner. The rest die in different ways and once the person is dead, they are useless to the Brazilians because they can't use their body parts anymore. Anyways, the last twenty minutes were fast paced but a bit repetitive because they stayed underwater for most of it.
Director John Stockwell is horrible at storytelling but he does have a nice eye for scenery which was the only true redeemable aspect of the film. They took full advantage of being in Brazil and managed to get many nice shots as well as some neat underwater scenes. While they were pretty attractive, these scenes really had nothing to do with the story so they were a bit gratuitous. The acting was pretty awful with everyone giving below average performances. Josh Duhamel was very wooden and Melissa George was just very bland. Desmond Askew gave by far the most annoying performance out of everyone while Miguel Lunardi gave the best performance although that's not much of an achievement. Overall, 2006 saw the release of many horror films and while Turistas offered something a little different than the usual, it wasn't able to function as an effective horror film. Rating 4/10