Brazilian Whacks

"Turistas" is the first American production to shoot entirely in Brazil and, by the light in which Brazilians are portrayed, it may be the last. According to "Turistas" - John Stockwell's dark tale of tourists running afoul of (what else?) a madman in the Brazilian jungle - the famed country of beaches and loose morals is every bit as dangerous as you've heard…and much, much more. Having been to Brazil, I understand the lure of its exotic, beach-going lifestyle. I also remember hearing tales of violence against tourists - particularly white American tourists. Mr. Stockwell's film preys on those fears. Well, those and the fear of getting your organs stolen.

The story, by first-time feature writer Michael Ross, follows a collection of backpackers who, after a ridiculous bus crash somewhere along the Brazilian coast, come upon an idyllic, untouched stretch of sand, complete with a party-happy beach bar and a seemingly friendly local staff. All this (no spoiler here) goes horribly wrong when our heroes wake up face down in the surf robbed or all their possessions and - worse yet - really, really hung-over. The rest of the film is a more or less by-the-numbers horror film, but with the added bonus of beautiful filmed-on-location settings.

Interestingly, "Turistas" is neither gory enough to be a full-on horror movie, exciting enough to be a full-on thriller, nor thought-provoking enough to be a statement on class issues between cultures. The film is stuck somewhere in between. To be sure, it has its gory moments - and not just the thoroughly grotesque sight of forced, semi-conscious organ removal - every death has that little extra splatter expected from this genre. There is also an exciting chase sequence in underwater caverns unlike anything I've seen before. For cultural commentary, the film attempts to give its psychotic killer a motive involving his frustration with his perceived rape of Brazilian culture.

None of this adds up to more than the sum of its parts, but I was pleasantly surprised that "Turistas" was not as exploitatively gross as some recent horror entries ("Hostel", "Saw III" and "See No Evil" spring reluctantly to mind). Mr. Stockwell ("Blue Crush", "Into the Blue"), who was inspired to make the film after his own close-call in Northern Peru, invested "Turistas" with a palpable sense of place and enough character development to at least give half a damn if they live or die.

For their part, the actors - including "All My Children" hunk Josh Duhamel, "The O.C." beauty Olivia Wilde and Melissa George (no stranger to the genre from "The Amityville Horror") - are easy on the eyes and, thanks to the film's plot and climate, are made to walk around in bathing suits for much of the time. They also do a fairly admirable job of playing that carefree, nothing-can-touch-us arrogance that comes with being on a vacation in an exotic locale. If they'd seen this movie first, however, they might have stuck to the beaches of "The O.C."